A man accused of murdering two people, who died after being forced into a toolbox and dumped in a creek, says he feared for his life before killing the pair.

February 11, 2020

A man accused of murdering two drug dealers who were forced into a toolbox and dumped in a creek told police he killed the pair because he feared ending up in the same box.

Cory Breton and Iuliana Triscaru’s decomposing bodies were found in a large metal box on February 11, 2016, at Scrubby Creek, south of Brisbane.

Tuhirangi-Thomas Tahiata, 28, has pleaded not guilty to murdering the pair after they were lured to a townhouse in Kingston 18 days earlier and assaulted by a group of men.

But in a police interview played in his Brisbane Supreme Court trial on Tuesday, Tahiata admitted carrying out the crime, saying he did it in fear for his own life.

“I murdered them. I had them in my car … I done it by myself,” he told Detective Nicole Tunks.

“I swam them out, and I stood on top of them. I heard them scream.

“I’m confessing everything, you know. I’m really sorry to all the family that I’ve hurt.”

Asked when he knew he would kill the pair, Tahiata said: “When they got on the back of my ute.”

“Cause what else was I gonna do. If I let them go, I’d be in the same, you know,” he said.

“These guys are crackheads, man. They’ll do anything.”

Later, Tahiata said he spotted the toolbox floating as he drove past on the Logan Motorway.

“I went down, put some more rocks on it,” he said.

“It was like, it was (a) stink, it’s, it was just like really smelly.

“Two decomposing bodies.”.

Tahiata initially denied any involvement, claiming he was at a church service on January 24, the day the pair disappeared.

Prosecutor David Meredith has previously told the trial Tahiata changed his story after admitting the murders because “he didn’t want to take the blame for what others had done”.

The trial continues on Wednesday.