Former KTN news anchor Esther Arunga will be sentenced on Thursday after admitting to lying about events leading to and after the death of her son, Sinclair Timberlake, who was murdered at their home in Brisbane, Australia in June 2014 in a bid to cover up the actions of her husband, Quincy Timberlake, the main suspect in the crime.
On Monday, Arunga pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to manslaughter and told an Australian Court that she had misrepresented the truth during her first interrogation with the police.
She told the court that on June 17, 2014 the night Sinclair was murdered, she found Timberlake hitting their son on the stomach and throwing him against the wall claiming that the boy “had a devil in his stomach which needed to be removed”.
Arunga also told the court that so heavy were the blows that Timberlake was throwing at the boy that she thought that even a grown man could not survive them and felt she needed to protect her husband because she knew that Timberlake was sick.
In June 2014, Arunga told the Australian police that Sinclair succumbed to injuries after falling down the stairs but the autopsy did not tally with the former presenter’s explanation and instead showed that the three year old boy died after suffering severe hits.
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“Crown prosecutor Danny Boyle told the court Esther called triple zero just before 2am on June 18. When paramedics and police arrived, she told them her son had fallen down the stairs,” the Australian Associated Press (AAP) reported on Monday.
According to the report, Arunga orchestrated the entire cover up and drove investigators away from Timberlake for almost a month before their bubble was busted.
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She however recanted her initial testimony once Timberlake was admitted to a mental health facility.
Defence lawyer Katarina Prskalo told the court that both Ms. Arunga and Timberlake had mental issues.
