Bloodstains on top of a rock wall were evidence a woman was accidentally crushed by a ride-on lawnmower and not strangled by her husband, a jury has heard.

A trail of blood leading from the steering wheel of the mower to the lacerated head of Frances Elizabeth Crawford was shown to a Brisbane Supreme Court jury on Tuesday.

Her husband Robert John Crawford faces trial accused of her murder.
The jury has been told the former RAAF pilot allegedly strangled his wife on July 29, 2024.

It is alleged that he staged the scene with the mower and falsified a series of text messages between their phones to explain the incident as a tragic accident.

Defence barrister Saul Holt told the jury no blood was found elsewhere in the couple’s sprawling rural property, despite Mrs Crawford sustaining a severe gash to her head.

“That is an incredibly important factor to consider in a trial when claims of staging are being assessed,” Holt said.

Crawford’s body was found next to the mower in the early hours of July 30 on a bitterly cold night in the Queensland highlands of Upper Lockyer, west of Toowoomba.

Holt said the trail of blood between the mower and the 49-year-old’s body showed her husband had been able to free her from where she had been pinned, with the steering wheel over her neck.

Text messages showed that at 11.21pm, Frances asked her husband, then 46, if he was going to bring the mower back under cover.

The defence contends that she later attempted to bring the mower in herself while dressed in her pyjamas.

On Monday, the jury heard evidence of a toxic marriage beset by multiple infidelities by Robert Crawford and an extensive list of demands and deal-breakers by his late wife.

The defendant was described by prosecutor Chris Cook as a Top Gun in his professional life, and as a terrible husband.

The pair had been in and out of counselling and on the verge of a final separation by July 2024, Cook told the jury.

Just a few days before her death, Crawford told her sister that she wished her husband would die in a car crash, so tired was she of dealing with his infidelities and emotional abuse.

The court also heard that she kept her philandering husband under close surveillance, and gave him an extensive list of boundaries and conditions to abide by if he wanted to stay in the marriage.

These included regularly submitting to polygraph tests — which Crawford allegedly boasted to a lover he could beat — regular church attendance and receipts for any spending over $30, including fuel and groceries.

The jury also heard Crawford, now 49, was financially motivated to kill his wife.
He had planned to retire at 50, and their property was conservatively valued at $2 million.

His wife’s life insurance was valued at a further $860,000, and he was the sole beneficiary in her will, jurors were told.

A costly divorce settlement would have forced Crawford back to work.

The trial, before Justice Lincoln Crowley, is expected to hear from police and first responders later on Tuesday.

-AAP