Dad on trial for murdering 4-year-old daughter because his custody time was reduced (Melbourne, Australia)

We've posted on dad ARTHUR PHILLIP FREEMAN before. This is the abusive, controlling jerk who threw his 4-year-old daughter off a bridge and killed her. Frankly, I sincerely doubt that Freeman was mentally ill in that he was severely impaired or unaware of his actions. On the contrary, he sounds like a standard-issue narcissistic killer, the kind who kills as casually as most of blow our noses. The kind who murder a child to "get back" at the child's mother for leaving his sorry @$$ and trying to protect her children. In fact, he told her in advance of his intentions. So much for "snapping" or mental illness. This was a premeditated crime, a homicide.

This is another one of those cases where the mother's concerns about the father were basically ignored and belittled Frankly, the courts should have CUT OFF ALL VISITATION with this @$$hole long ago, instead of merely reducing the custody time. Any time still left this guy with the means and opportunity to murder this child.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/queensland/a/-/latest/8973384/melb-bridge-dad-told-wife-say-bye-court/

Vic bridge killer dad 'mentally impaired'
By Daniel Fogarty, AAP March 8, 2011, 5:22 pm Send

The man who threw his four-year-old daughter off Melbourne's West Gate Bridge was mentally impaired at the time, his barrister says.

Arthur Phillip Freeman stopped his four-wheel drive at the top of the bridge and carried his daughter Darcey to the edge before flinging her off in January 2009.

Darcey Freeman, who was starting school that day, fell like a "rag doll" for 58 metres into the water and later died, a Victorian Supreme Court jury heard on Tuesday.

As Freeman drove off, his eldest son Ben urged his father to go back because "Darcey can't swim".

The 37-year-old Hawthorn man was angry because a day earlier the amount of time that he had custody of his children had been reduced.

He and his three children had spent the night at his parents' house on Victoria's Surf Coast. He was meant to be taking Darcey to school.

Minutes before the death, Freeman told his former wife Peta Barnes over the telephone to "say goodbye to your children" adding "you will never see them again".

Freeman also spoke to a friend in the United Kingdom and said everywhere he turned "there were angry women against him".

Freeman has pleaded not guilty to the murder with his barrister David Brustman SC arguing he was mentally impaired at the time.

"Was Mr Freeman mad or was he bad? Clearly one can see the battle lines drawn between the Crown and the defence," he told the Melbourne court on Tuesday.

"Should he be condemned forever for the killing of his daughter or should he ultimately be treated until he's well enough to function in society?

"We say to you, and it's an issue, that he was mentally impaired.

"The effect of this ... was to render him incapable of reasoning in a rational manner, specifically that he could in this state distinguish between right and wrong. Also that he could understand the nature and quality of his actions."

Mr Brustman said he did not dispute the facts of the case: "An innocent, four-year-old child was flung to her death by that man sitting there in the dock".

Chief Crown Prosecutor Gavin Silbert, SC, said Freeman murdered his daughter.

"What we say is that the accused, by a conscious, voluntary and deliberate act, intending to kill or at the very least to cause very serious injury to Darcey Freeman, flung her from the top of the West Gate Bridge and thereby killed her," he said.

The trial before Justice Paul Coghlan continues on Wednesday.