THE woman accused of murdering her partner in order to inherit his Walcha farm is set to fight the charge at trial, a court has heard.
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Natasha Beth Darcy sat silently as she appeared via video link in Tamworth Local Court on Wednesday morning.
The case was due to be committed for trial or sentence but magistrate Julie Soars was told another adjournment was needed, after the Crown rejected "representations" from the defence, just a day beforehand.
"It's matter where there had been representations made to the DPP," DPP solicitor Kat McKay told the court.
"Those representations were rejected."
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Ms McKay said Darcy's solicitor, Tracey Randall, "was only advised yesterday."
"Now that we have a decision, the accused will go to trial on the substantive charge," Ms Randall told the court.
But Ms Randall, who appeared via video link, told the court she wanted the matter to progress, and had expected it to resolve on Wednesday before the representations were rejected.
Ms Soars granted a two week adjournment for the defence to finalise its position.
"I'll mark this matter as bail not applied for refused today," she told Darcy.
Darcy is being held in custody at Mary Wade Women's Correctional Centre in Sydney on one count of murdering Mathew Dunbar.
Darcy, 43, stands accused of murdering the Walcha grazier on August 2, 2017, on his property, Pandora, outside of Walcha. Detectives allege Darcy killed her de-facto partner in order to inherit the farm.
The Leader revealed in 2017 that it was the police case that Darcy lied to investigators, used aliases and false names to allegedly source drugs, and researched then deleted web browser searches on how to commit murder.
Police will allege that many of these searches relate to certain methods of causing death that are undetectable or hard to locate during a post-mortem, and were allegedly deleted from her phone, but were recovered by police.
The case against Darcy is voluminous, the court has been told on several occasions.
In July, then sitting Tamworth magistrate Roger Prowse criticised the delays in the murder case, citing adjournment after adjournment on the court papers.
"It'll be two years and three weeks old," he said at the time, "since the act that is alleged to have given rise to the charge" and "it's not a matter of congratulations" on the time taken.
Darcy has been behind bars since her arrest in Walcha in November 2017, accused of the Walcha farmer's murder three months earlier.
Breanna Chillingworth
Northern Daily Leader Senior Crime and Court Reporter
Northern Daily Leader Senior Crime and Court Reporter
