It is a bizarre crime that has swept through a sleepy regional town in Victoria, Australia.
The stay-at-home mother was found guilty of drugging and killing her husband by adding his favorite lemon cookies to sleeping pills.
The desolate town of Walpeup in northwest Victoria, Australia, was torn in half after Noel Payne, 68, was killed in his own residence by his wife Rebecca Payne in 2020.
“I used to be completely devastated,” Noel’s daughter Tracy Payne told Nine’s Current case through tears.
From the surface, the Paynes appeared like a standard country family.
![Rebecca Payne](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/poison-cookies.jpg?w=1024)
But those closest to them say their marriage was not a comfortable one.
Noel first met Rebecca when she lived round the corner to his daughter Tracy in Gorokan, Latest South Wales.
Tracy said she thought Rebecca was bad news and never wanted romance to blossom between the couple.
She said that her neighbor and her father liked one another and quickly got married before starting a latest life together in rural Victoria, where they spent healthy holidays with friends.
But neighbors said the connection was marked by violence and allegations that Noel had beaten his wife.
Family friend Barry said Current case he also saw “bruises on her arm and … chest.”
“I feel he beat her,” Barry said.
![Noel Payne](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/poison-cookies-02.jpg?w=1024)
In court, prosecutors said Rebecca wanted out of the wedding – that she was upset that one other woman, Noel, was living with them of their home, and that she was also fed up with being beaten up.
The court heard that Rebecca had been dreaming of drugging her husband for months, and told the jury during her testimony that she expected him to simply “feel drowsy and fall asleep” that night once they finally put their plan into motion.
Barry said Rebecca was an excellent cook and Noel liked her cookies.
“[They] I at all times ate biscuits and cookies,” said Barry.
On September 1, 2020, Rebecca baked a big batch of lemon biscuits and crushed several temazepam tablets in a mortar and mortar.
She used the icing powder on one cookie and set it aside for Noel, which she served to him that evening with Milo’s cup.
He never woke up after that.
Rebecca admitted that when she found her husband with out a pulse, she didn’t attempt to resuscitate him, nor did she call an ambulance.
She claimed to have panicked and quickly wrapped the body in a blanket, then tied each end with duct tape, dropped it right into a chest freezer, and closed the freezer door.
A couple of days later, Rebecca dragged the freezer right into a neighbor’s yard.
Soon after, a resident opened the lid, called the police, and Rebecca was arrested.
She pleaded guilty to manslaughter and claimed that she didn’t mean to kill her husband, however the jury didn’t imagine her and she or he was found guilty of murder.
A medical examination of Noel’s body shows no evidence of whether he died from a drug overdose or asphyxiation, and Tracy wonders if her dad continues to be alive within the freezer.
Did he get up or was he attempting to get out? she said.
Now Tracy has nightmares about what happened and says that every one she has left is his ashes. “She robbed me of my father without with the ability to say goodbye to him,” she said.