The Case... Aussie Mystery

The Story So Far

When Christine Crickitt was found dead in her home, neither a pathologist nor a coroner could determine the cause of her death. Five years later, her husband, a respected GP, was arrested for her murder..

- Kate Williams

When Brian and Christine Crickitt married in 1994, it was a second chance at love. Both had been married and divorced before. Both already had children.

But any happiness in the early days had turned toxic by 2009.

Christine told Tracey, her daughter from her first marriage, that she and Brian, a GP, were having difficulties.

‘He’s not coming home at night,’ she said, even saying that she and Brian had not been intimate for five years. There was no love left between the pair and they had terrible rows.

Christine, 61, had arthritis and Graves’ disease, an autoimmune thyroid condition, and Brian had also prescribed her medication for depression and bipolar disorder.

Tracey perhaps worried that her sickly mother was heading for her second divorce.

But what happened next was much worse.

On 1 January 2010, Brian returned to their Sydney home to find Christine’s body slumped on the en suite floor.

He called for help but, as a doctor, he knew... His wife was already dead. In a statement given to police, Brian said he and Christine had been unhappy and didn’t have a good word to say about his recently deceased wife.

‘The last month things have been very difficult and I’ve been very unhappy. I’ve been in two minds about what to do,’ he admitted. Brian said that during a heated row on the night of 31 December 2009, Christine had accused him of having an affair, and ‘not wanting things to turn physical’, he’d left.

On returning, next day, he said Christine was dead.

Police asked where Brian had been in the intervening hours. He said he’d driven around, then called a female friend.