Melissa Caddick’s widower says police tricked him over alleged Vaucluse assault

The widower of conwoman Melissa Caddick has argued he was lured into answering allegations that he assaulted a 73-year-old woman in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, having thought it was related to his dead wife’s property.

Anthony Koletti is accused of “shoulder barging” the woman at Vaucluse’s clifftop Lighthouse Reserve in July last year, causing her to fall over, and ignoring her calls as she lay on the ground.

Facing Downing Centre Local Court as a two-day hearing started on Thursday, Koletti said he was contacted by an officer who was “dealing with a matter regarding my wife’s belongings” and was asked to attend a police station.

When he was called into an interview room and asked recorded questions about the alleged Vaucluse assault, he said he “felt threatened”.

“I had just assumed it was because he had some stuff of my wife’s,” he told the court.

Koletti said that he would have called a lawyer if he had more context.

His high-profile lawyer, Zali Burrows, described the nature in which the 44-year-old was called into a police station and questioned over the incident as “an entrapment in the grossest form”.

Following the incident, police publicly released a photo of a man they wanted to speak with.

Having admitted to being the man in photos shown to him during the police interview, Koletti was charged with common assault.

In body-worn footage of the initial police interview played to the court, Koletti agreed with an officer that he was in the park at the time.

He denied “walking past two ladies” or seeing anyone “knocked over”, or shoulder barging one woman and walking off as she called out from the ground. The officer suggested he turned around walked back past them minutes later, which he again denied.

Burrows had argued against the police interview footage being admitted as evidence due to Koletti being “intimidated” into participating. She said the officer’s suggestion the woman called out from the ground was based on a “false statement”, as her police statement said she quickly got back to her feet.

The prosecutor argued proper police processes were followed.

Judge Scott Nash admitted the evidence, finding that the footage was not improperly obtained.

Testifying, the alleged victim said she and a friend were walking two dogs along the footpath and chatting when a man suddenly barged into her shoulder, knocking her to the ground.

She said she called after the man to tell him there were police ahead – whom she had earlier seen in the park – but he did not stop. She said he took off his hat and continued walking away.

A short time late