Murder accused `met wife on internet`

A MAN killed his wife and stepdaughter and threw them off a lookout in the New South Wales Blue Mountains before asking his teenage son to lie for him, according to court documents.

The 41-year-old man is charged with the murder of his 38-year-old wife and her nine-year-old daughter, whom he reported missing last month.

Two bodies, which are yet to be formally identified, were found by bushwalkers near Echo Point in the Blue Mountains yesterday afternoon.

The man told police he believed the pair left the family home in Blacktown, Sydney, on foot and had not seen them since 8pm on Monday, May 5.

The man did not appear in Blacktown Local Court today, and did not apply for bail, which was formally refused.

He will reappear via video-link on July 21.

Police facts before the court today indicated the man asked his 14-year-old son to tell police he searched the neighbourhood for his wife and stepdaughter for two hours on May 5.

However, the police facts said mobile phone records placed him at the scene where the bodies were dumped.

His son later allegedly told police he had misled them at his father`s urging.

The Indian national, an engineer, met his wife on the internet in July 2006.

Both had children from previous marriages - each had a nine-year-old daughter and he also had a 14-year-old son, the police facts stated.

The woman moved to Australia to marry him in May last year.

The man told police they had a "loving and caring bond", but her sister, who lives in Parramatta, told police he had been violent to her in the past.

The police facts said Faye Oldfield, from the Jessie Street Domestic Violence Service, said the wife had come to her in January this year after being verbally abused by her husband, who threatened to kill her or have her deported.

The man`s former wife, who moved back to India after their marriage breakdown, returned to Australia on May 26 and had moved back into the family home.

She accompanied her son to Blacktown police station yesterday after the bodies were discovered.

The boy, who was originally instructed by his father to give a different version of events, said his father had driven him and his sister to "a parking place" in the Blue Mountains.

The siblings went for a walk and when they returned, their father was smoking a cigarette and then drove them home without any mention of their stepmother and sister.

Police will allege the man murdered his wife and stepdaughter in the family home, then drove them to the Blue Mountains before throwing them off a cliff.

They said he had shown no remorse and continued to deny involvement despite an "extremely strong" prosecution case.

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