The former fiancee of an NT policeman who killed an Indigenous teenager has told an inquest she fell for a charming man but her opinion of him soon changed.

October 31, 2022

The former fiancee of a Northern Territory policeman who killed an Indigenous teenager says she fell for a charming man but her opinion of him soon changed.

Claudia Campagnaro told police she wasn’t surprised Constable Zachary Rolfe had shot dead Kumanjayi Walker during a bungled outback arrest in Yuendumu, northwest of Alice Springs.

The former police officer, now a nurse, also said Const Rolfe talked about killing before he shot the 19-year-old Walpiri man three times on November 9, 2019.

An inquest into his death on Friday heard Const Rolfe swept Ms Campagnaro off her feet and the pair were engaged after about five weeks.

But by the time they broke up a year later, she had a very poor opinion of her lover.

“When we first met I thought he was very charming … So kind and generous, and by the end of it he was just the total opposite of what I thought he was,” she said.

“The charm had well and truly fallen.”

Ms Campagnaro told the coroner that during the time she was a police officer with Const Rolfe in Alice Springs, he confided that his goal was to join the Australian Defence Force’s Special Air Service regiment so he could “be paid to go out and shoot people”.

“It wasn’t until later on in the relationship that I started thinking those comments were vile,” she said.

In an interview with detectives after Mr Walker was killed, Ms Campagnaro said Const Rolfe didn’t like being in the NT police.

“He thought it was a joke, and yeah, he just wanted to get into the SAS, because basically, yeah, they go away for long periods of time, get paid a lot of money, and go out and kill people,” she said.

The inquest heard Const Rolfe linked shooting a person on the job with going on a paid holiday during the investigation that followed, allegedly saying on several occasions he would “like” to kill.

“This was toward the end of our relationship because I actually remember saying to him: ‘No, that’s not the kind of holiday that I want to go on”,” Ms Campagnaro said.

“I remember feeling, at that time, uncomfortable him saying that.”

The coroner also heard about Ms Campagnaro’s reaction when told Const Rolfe had shot Mr Walker dead.

“I wasn’t really surprised that it was him,” she told detectives.

“If it was going to be anyone that was involved in that kind of thing, it was going to be him.”

The inquest continues on Monday.