Defence counsel Peter Kilduff on Friday made his final address in the trial of Ms Stone, who has pleaded not guilty to the murder of her partner at their Long Gully home on December 18, 2016.

Mr Reid died from severe burns after he was doused in flammable liquid and set alight.

Mr Kilduff asked why the Crown told the jury to “put to one side” what Mr Reid said while in the ambulance that night.

“Why did they do that? Because it supports her version,” he said.

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He said a dying person, as Mr Reid knew he was, would not want to die with a “lie upon their lips”.

“I ask you, on behalf of Kate Stone, not to find ways to find her guilty,” Mr Kilduff said.

Mr Kilduff asked the jury to consider the planning involved if the prosecution’s version of events were true.

In this case, he said, his client’s ‘plan’ would have started on November 7, 2016, when Mr Reid’s mother said she received a phone call in which her son told her Ms Stone had chased him with a knife.

Mr Kilduff said the evidence of this call was unreliable, with no phone records to back it up.

He took the jury to the so-called “splash park incident” of November 27 that year, when Mr Reid and Ms Stone’s son allegedly threatened other children.

This sparked a confrontation between the couple and a man or group of men at their home later that same day.

Mr Kilduff said the version of events put forward by Benjamin Thatcher – who told the court he went to the house and became involved in a dispute with Mr Reid, but later that day forgot about the incident – was a lie.

He questioned whether the men allegedly involved in that incident would have “no notion of payback”.

The barrister derided the idea Ms Stone decided to use that incident as a cover for murdering her partner.

Mr Kilduff also questioned how Ms Stone would have ordered a dying Mr Reid to blame the men involved in this earlier incident for his fatal injuries rather than her, if she were actually the culprit.

He suggested one person could not have physically thrown so much fuel on Mr Reid and set him alight, and rather “many hands” were needed to commit such an act.

Ms Stone’s daughter made a triple zero call at 10.45pm that night reporting her mother was “swallowing her tongue”.

Mr Kilduff said this meant Ms Stone had only 45 minutes or so to “get her act together” in order to kill her partner.

“We say to you the prosecution cannot exclude the reasonable possibility that intruders did it,” he said.

Mr Kilduff referred to the evidence of Mr Thatcher, during which the court heard he had prior convictions for violent offences, and the evidence of Jason Baxter that Mr Thatcher was “ropeable” about the splash park incident.

Mr Thatcher was in custody at the time Mr Reid was attacked, but the barrister suggested there was a “Long Gully grapevine” and “intricate criminal network”.

Inconsistencies in Mr Baxter’s evidence about his knowledge of the splash park incident, he said, were attempts to “play it down”.

Mr Kilduff said the prosecution also held Ms Stone to a higher standard than other witnesses.

“She’s branded a liar in circumstances where she’s imprecise,” he said.

Mr Kilduff said his client’s incorrect identifications of the men she claimed were involved in the attack did not make her guilty.

DNA evidence linking Ms Stone to the enamel thinner can allegedly used in the crime, he said, was possibly because “DNA from householders is all over the house”.

Regarding Ms Stone’s claim petrol was used, Mr Kilduff referred to the evidence of an experienced firefighter, who said he thought he smelled something like petrol that night.

Mr Kilduff took the jury to the confessions neighbours told the court Ms Stone had made to them, in which they claimed she said she had drugged Mr Reid.

But he said the evidence Mr Reid had no drugs or alcohol in his system discounted this.

The evidence of a next-door neighbour who told the court she heard someone make a threat to kill was also raised.

“The man, not the woman… The man says, ‘I’m going to kill you’. Who’s the man? Darren Reid, or is it the intruders?” Mr Kilduff said.

In finishing her final address, Crown prosecutor Melissa Mahady took the jury to “lies” from Ms Stone, including her claim the backyard was well-lit at the time of the attack.

Ms Mahady said Ms Stone lied about being doused in petrol, because the forensic evidence showed she had no flammable liquid on her clothing and it was thinners, not petrol, involved in the attack.

Expert evidence also showed Ms Stone’s evidence she stood next to Mr Reid and embraced him while alight were lies, the prosecutor said.

Ms Mahady asserted the only reason Ms Stone lied was because she knew she was guilty of Mr Reid’s death.

She said the evidence of neighbours that Ms Stone confessed to the attack was “powerful” and should be believed, and their reason as to why they did not go to police with the information understandable.

The trial continues.