Leader journalist Anna Falkenmire reflects on the year that was for court, crime and COVID-19 in Tamworth in 2021

AS POLICE and the courts adapted to yet another year of pandemic disruptions in Tamworth, the city was also dealing with freak weather events and COVID-19.

The year 2021 has almost come and gone but there has been no shortage of major headlines across the past 12 months - everything from murder trial verdicts and terrorism investigations to water security and the first ever local COVID-19 jab have made it into the Leader's pages.

Here are the five stories from 2021 that left a mark for Leader journalist Anna Falkenmire.

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The calculated and cold-blooded murder of a "kind-hearted" Walcha sheep grazier for his money demands a lifetime behind bars for his killer, a court heard during a sentencing hearing for Natasha Beth Darcy.

The 46-year-old the NSW Supreme Court in October after a jury found she blended a cocktail of drugs and fed it to her partner Mathew Dunbar before he took his last breath on August 2, 2017.

Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield told the court Darcy's culpability was "so extreme" because she researched the murder for six months - including a Google search for 'how to get away with murder' and was backed by a purely financial motive.

Darcy is set to be sentenced next year.

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A routine doctor's appointment for Barry Bonarius turned into one that will go down in Tamworth's history.

He arrived at Northwest Health for scripts back in March and walked out partly immunised against COVID-19.

Mr Bonarius became the first person in Tamworth to be vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine after it was delivered to a handful of local GP clinics.

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The violent intruder that stabbed young mother Teah Rose Luckwell to death inside the "sanctity" of her own kitchen was Jesse Leigh Green.

Justice Stephen Campbell told the court in November the only rational conclusion was that the 30-year-old man "violently attacked" Ms Luckwell and murdered her inside her South Tamworth home in the early hours of March 28, 2018.

The act of murder was proven at the end of the long-running special hearing in the NSW Supreme Court, but Justice Campbell found Green was not criminally responsible for the stabbing due to mental impairment.

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Healthcare workers were bracing for a system under strain as the doors to freedom began to open across the state in late 2021.

It seemingly worked out okay but when the incredibly infectious virus crept into the community and there were so many unknowns, Tamworth GP Dr Ian Kamerman was "extremely worried" the case count would rise rapidly as the local vaccination rate was less than 70 per cent.

Gomeroi man's body found in the river after massive police search

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Forensic testing confirmed the body that police divers tragically found in the Gwydir River in October was missing Gomeroi man Gordon Copeland.

Searchers made the devastating discovery of human remains during a river dive, just 500 metres from where Mr Copeland, 22, was last seen three months earlier in the early hours of July 10.

The Gomeroi man's family had been searching for their father, son, nephew and cousin Mr Copeland almost every day for the past three months.

At the time a renewed search launched, the family told ACM that even if he was no longer with them, they wanted to be able to give him a proper goodbye and lay him to rest.

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