Man charged with murder, extradited over 2020 death of partner in Northern Territory

Northern Territory police have extradited a man from Victoria after charging him with the murder of his partner near Darwin, five years ago.

Transcript

00:00I'm here at the Darwin Airport where Peter Scammell, a 44-year-old man, has just arrived, escorted by police.

00:10He's been charged with the murder of his partner in 2020 and extradited from Victoria to face Darwin local court here tomorrow.

00:19Essentially, Katrina Hawker, a 43-year-old nurse who was working at the Royal Darwin Hospital at the time,

00:26died from an overdose in her backyard where she was living here with Peter Scammell at the time.

00:33No arrests were made at the time, but last year at an inquest,

00:37NT Coroner Elizabeth Armitage essentially said she didn't think that Katrina Hawker took her own life.

00:45The cause of death was put down to an overdose from a combination of alcohol and temazepam, a sleeping medication,

00:53and the coroner referred the case back to the DPP and police for further investigation.

00:58So we don't know what's happened with that investigation over the past few months,

01:02but what we do know is that police arrested Peter Scammell last week in Victoria.

01:08He's in Darwin now and will likely find out more in court tomorrow.

01:13But he's been charged with a couple of incidents behind the dead of her to find the disease.

01:16So yeah, that feels weird.

01:18He's on the back of our site.

01:20So I'm a cleaner.

01:22You know, at the end of the day, it doesn't mean the death.

01:25We're also saying that it was a bad thing.

01:27We don't know it's complicated.

01:30So a lot of people are saying that we're in the end of our operations.