The jury in the trial of a Gold Coast businessman accused of murdering his estranged wife has retired to consider its verdict.

September 6, 2019

A jury has retired to consider the case against a Gold Coast businessman accused of murdering his estranged wife amid a bitter divorce dispute.

John William Chardon, 72, denies murdering Novy Chardon, 34, on February 6, 2013 – the same day he received a letter about custody of their two children.

The jury began deliberations on Friday following a three-week Brisbane Supreme Court trial that heard Chardon became “furious” over the letter.

“He thought he was being told Novy was going to have control of the children and would control when he could see them,” prosecutor Mark Green said in his closing remarks.

“There was no way in the world he was putting up with that.”

The court heard Ms Chardon was a woman emerging from her husband’s “dark shadow”.

She loved her kids and had just started a beauty business, Mr Green said.

He said Ms Chardon’s absence in the days after she disappeared prompted a friend, not Chardon, to call the police.

The court heard the Crown doesn’t know how Chardon killed his wife of 12 years or what he did with her body, which has never been found.

But Mr Green said it was likely something had happened to Ms Chardon in her bedroom after she returned home from dinner with a friend and her daughter.

Chardon had received the letter mid-afternoon and was waiting in the garage at 9pm when the roller door lifted at the couple’s Upper Coomera home.

He told the court Ms Chardon ignored him when he confronted her before saying she was leaving.

But Green called him a liar and said he had murdered his wife that night.

Forensic tests found urine in her carpet despite Chardon hiring a carpet cleaner the morning after.

“He could have disabled her in some way, done something to her in the bedroom that let him get her out of the house and kill her out of the house,” Mr Green said.