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“She said to me, ‘I’ll make sure you do 20 years for this,’ when I suggested she should take responsibility for what she did,” he said in the NSW Supreme Court on Tuesday.
On the return journey, he pressed the issue only to be attacked and told to walk home, the jury heard.
“I said to Carol again, ‘Twenty years. You need to take responsibility for what you did,’ and Carol stopped the vehicle, punched me in the eye, and told me to get out.”
Both Dilosa and McHenry are on trial charged with murdering 29-year-old Easey with a knife and hammer at McHenry’s Narara home on the NSW Central Coast on August 17, 2019.
They have denied being involved in the killing, pointing the finger at each other.
Easey’s decomposing body was found two weeks after her death in a creek near the M1 motorway at Killingworth.
Dilosa claims he was asleep in his van outside McHenry’s home when the murder occurred.
Returning to the house with McHenry and a friend Jeremy Princehorn on August 18, Dilosa said he smoked ice with the two of them before single-handedly wrapping up the body.
He helped place Easey’s body in a kitchen cupboard, loaded the cupboard in the back of his van a few days later, and then disposed of the body near a bridge over Cockle Creek, the court heard.
“Why did you do anything with the body at all?” he was asked by his barrister Angus Webb.
“I’d had a long history with Carol. Carol had pled to me that she’d never see the kids again. I loved those children. They’d already lost their father,” Dilosa replied.
The jury heard that as well as helping get rid of the body, Dilosa had also thrown the bloodied murder weapons in a bonfire and cleaned up the blood in the back of his van.
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During this time, he was “back and forward” about taking responsibility for the murder, he said.
“At the time I cleaned the van, there was no self-preservation. I didn’t wear gloves because my mindset was I was taking the van, there was nothing to hide.”
However, Dilosa said he eventually drew the line at helping her clean up her Narara home, he told the court.
“If I went down … she wipes her hands scot-free of committing a murder,” he said.
At one stage, McHenry told him she wanted to burn her house down, he added.
He denied claims he had confessed to the murder or that he had considered dumping the body in a skip bin near his Cardiff home.
He also said he had never argued with Easey in the days before she was killed, and rejected allegations by McHenry to police that he had abused both her and her children while they were in a relationship.
Earlier on Tuesday, the jury heard that before attending the Narara home, Dilosa had doubts that there was a body at all because McHenry had previously claimed she was to blame for the death of a former partner who overdosed in 2016.
Although this was determined to be an accident or suicide, McHenry still underwent a mental health assessment by medical professionals before being discharged the following day.
The trial in front of Justice Robertson Wright continues.
Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.
