A jury has been unable to reach a verdict over the alleged murder of a young mother whose body was wrapped in plastic and dumped in a creek north of Sydney.

On Thursday, NSW Supreme Court Justice Robertson Wright discharged the jury which was split on whether Justin Kent Dilosa, 36, murdered the then 29-year-old Danielle Easey with a knife and hammer.

The same jury found Dilosa's co-accused Carol Marie McHenry, 35, guilty of the murder on Monday.

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During a lengthy trial, the jury heard Easey had been brutally bashed at McHenry's Narara home on August 17, 2019 after the two women, along with Dilosa, took ice together earlier that day.

Her body had extensive scalp lacerations, skull depressions and stab wounds to her back.

Easey was allegedly wrapped a chemsuit, plastic and tape and concealed in a cupboard stashed in Dilosa's van before being dumped in a creek near the M1 motorway at Killingworth where it was discovered two weeks later.

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Dilosa and McHenry, who were in an intense romantic relationship until August 2018, each pleaded not guilty and pointed the finger at each other for the killing.

The jury was told McHenry got into an argument with her friend Easey who had items stolen from her son and boyfriend in her handbag.

While admitting that he helped cover up the murder, including by throwing the knife and hammer into a fire, Dilosa said he had been physically threatened by McHenry after the killing when he suggested she had to take responsibility for what had happened.

He will appear for arraignment in the NSW Supreme Court on February 10 next year.

McHenry's sentence hearing has been scheduled for April 3.

A raft of pumice hundreds of metres long has washed up on the shore at Lake Taupō.

Marlene Parrott finds it hard when her girlfriends share stories about their daughters' lives.

She likes to hear them, but she doesn't have any new photos to show or stories to tell.

Parrott was dealt a lifetime of pain and suffering when her 29-year-old daughter, Maddison Jane, was murdered in Geelong in December 2018.

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Four years on, Christmas remains a difficult time.

Maddison should be dressing up as Santa's helper and putting up the Christmas tree with her dad in the special way they had.

Cheese platters and glasses of bubbles with family friends are different, and she's no longer there for walks on the beach with friends and their dogs.

Her own dogs still wait at the door for her to come home.

Her killer, Nicholas James Cross, 35, faced a pre-sentence hearing in Geelong after a Victorian Supreme Court justice found him guilty of murder on Friday.

"Mr Cross maintains his innocence," his lawyer Glenn Casement said.

It's not an aggravating feature of the crime that Cross still blames another person for the crime, he said, but added that it supports the point Cross is "utterly remorseless".

Cross fatally shot Maddison in the forehead with a rifle held at point-blank range inside a glamping tent at the Geelong Showgrounds on the morning of December 3, 2018.

She had been staying there with her partner.

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There's no motive for the killing, Justice Rita Incerti – who heard Cross's judge-alone trial – recalled.

Cross tried to blame Maddison's partner for the murder.

But he texted a friend the next day to say "when they get me I'm doing 10yrs min".

The horror for Maddison and her family didn't end with the shooting.

Cross set fire to the tent in an effort to cover his tracks, burning Maddison's body inside.

Parrott described Maddison and her brother Luke as best friends.

"My life fell apart the day Maddison went away. No day will ever be the same without my beautiful daughter," she said in a statement read to the court by prosecutors.

She signed it "Love mum".

Every day Dale Parrott kisses a picture of Maddison, but it's not the same as doing it in person.

"My counsellor says time will heal. I do not think so," he said.

In a letter cremated with Maddison, her best friend thanked her for a true and everlasting friendship, for school holidays together, for telling her that sometimes boys weren't worth her time.

"Thank you for being you," she wrote of the girl who had been like a sister since they were 12.

Casement said Cross had a childhood marred by substance abuse and domestic violence, but he was unwilling to have details revealed in court.

The hearing is continuing.

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The man now struggles struggles to continue with work after the attack.

A wooden baby rattle from Beads&BubsAU has been recalled as it may pose a choking hazard to young children.

The toy was available for sale between November 3rd, 2022 and November 28, 2022 through the company's online stores on Etsy and Facebook.

Product Safety Australia recommends that anyone who has purchased the toy should destroy it and contact the company for a refund.

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The rattle, made from beechwood and silicone, is smaller than the mandatory minimum safety standard for toys for children 36 months and younger.

Anything smaller than a 35 mm film canister is too small and should be removed from the child's grasp.

The baby toy from Beads&BubsAU has pieces smaller than this, meaning it poses a possible choking hazard for young children which could lead to serious injury or death.

How to get a refund 

Consumers who purchased the toy can get a refund from Beads&BubsAU by following these steps

1. Remove the toy from your child and destroy it
2. Take a photo of the destroyed product
3. Send the photo to be**********@***il.com and ask for a refund due to the recall
4. If the product has already been disposed of before being destroyed, notify Beads&BubsAU through their Etsy page or email so the safe disposal of the product can be monitored.

For more information, consumers can contact Beads&BubsAU via Etsy or be**********@***il.com

Mental health issues weren’t to blame for the offences but were relevant, a judge said.

A Tasmanian photographer thought he was attending a school where a child might have "a broken arm" after falling off a jumping castle, just before Christmas last year.

Instead he was one of the first on the scene of a "freak accident" involving wind and a jumping castle, which lead to the death of six children, including the son of his close friend.

A complex coronial inquest into the Hillcrest Primary School tragedy is ongoing but it is believed children fell approximately 10 metres after a powerful gust of wind lifted up a jumping castle and zorb balls into the air.

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The catastrophic event is still incredibly raw for the Devonport community, who are gathering to remember the children at various events for the first anniversary.

A commemoration was held at the Devonport Market Square on Thursday evening for the public while a private ceremony will be held at Hillcrest Primary School today.

How the day unfolded for a local photographer

Former The Advocate photographer Simon Sturzaker said the day started off as a pretty ordinary day.

As the only newspaper photographer rostered on to cover Tasmanian's entire North-West Coast, a region that stretches nearly 200 kilometres in length, Sturzaker was grabbing his "normal" cup of coffee when his schedule suddenly changed.

He said he got a call from one of his newspaper editors asking if he could "skip the job in Burnie and head straight to Hillcrest".

"They said there had been an accident with a jumping castle and that's all I sort of knew at that stage," Sturzaker said.

"I just thought 'oh, some kid has fallen off the jumping castle and broken their arm' and that would be the (story) angle about some safety thing."

When he arrived at the primary school, which has about 500 students, Sturzaker noticed police were starting to put up tarps.

All of a sudden he realised it was "pretty serious".

Among the children were students were Peter Dodt, Jalailah Jayne-Marie Jones, Addison Stewart, Jye Sheehan, Zane Mellor and Chace Harrison, who died at the scene and at various hospitals across the state.

A coronial inquest update found 39 students had been on the oval for 45 minutes before the "mini tornado event".

Once Sturzaker saw the horrific scene he said it all became "a bit of a blur".

Being a community of just 26,000 people, most people know each other.

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Sturzaker, who was born and bred on Tasmania's North-West Coast, knew children at that school but he kept the thought at the back of his mind while he was working to take photos of the scene.

"The image that stands out to me… Was the shot of the two police women on the hill consoling each other on the playground, and that went around the world."

The image was used by news outlets across the country and the globe, including in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, India and New Zealand.

Sturzaker is close friends with Craig and Teresa Harrison, the parents of Chace, the sixth child who died in a Hobart hospital three days after the incident.

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"She (Teresa) ran past me to jump in a cop car and she was fairly distressed.

"I didn't know at that stage… they would have had two kids at that school so whether it was Chace or Sienna."

The next day Sturzaker made the three-and-a-half hour drive to Hobart to be with the Harrisons, before Chace died in hospital on December 19.

Sturzaker is involved with the Devonport Warriors Basketball Club, where 11-year-old Chace played.

"We have seen him grow up, my brother coached him in his basketball team that year so he had a fair bit to do with the family.

"From a family a point of view they would say how quirky he was, a witty sense of humour.

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"He was a little bit shy but he loved his basketball and he was a good little player."

Before his death, Chace was playing in the future development squad for Basketball Tasmania.

The club put up a sign on the stadium that reads "Chace, 14, always a little warrior" and they created a tribute with his number 14, which will eventually be on all of the jerseys.

He said the hardest part for the parents was in the months after.

"We have tried to be in constant contact with them… We just want to make sure we are there for that support network for them."

As for Sturzaker, it's made him extra appreciative of spending time with his own children.

"Nothing is given… Do what you love to do."

Snow and ice disrupted rail travel and closed schools in parts of south-east England this week.

The mother of one of the four college students killed near the University of Idaho last month expressed frustration over police communications on the status of the investigation into the murders.

"It's sleepless nights. It's feeling sick to your stomach. It's just being left in the dark," Kristi Goncalves, the mother of 21-year-old victim Kaylee Goncalves, said in an interview aired on NBC's TODAY show on Thursday.

Goncalves recounted the day she learned something had happened to her daughter.

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"We're running around for hours just not knowing what was going on, what happened," she explained. "… We found out by people calling us. And the sheriff showed up about three hours later."

She also described learning about the police interest in a white Hyundai sedan seen in the area around the time of the murders not from investigators but from reading about it in a news release sent to her by someone else.

Authorities are sorting through tens of thousands of registered vehicles that fit the criteria of one spotted near the residence the night of the attacks, the Moscow Police Department said in a news release on Thursday.

"So far, we have a list of approximately 22,000 registered white Hyundai Elantras that fit into our criteria that we're sorting through," Chief James Fry said in a video update.

"We are confident that the occupant or occupants of that vehicle have information that's critical to this investigation."

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Goncalves said her family learned graphic details of their daughter's autopsy when a woman from the coroner's office called and asked her 17-year-old daughter if she wanted to know the findings.

"She asked, are you sure you want to know this? And my daughter, thinking that she did for whatever reason, said yes. And she proceeded to tell her."

The Latah County Coroner's Office was not immediately available for comment.

The killings of Kaylee Goncalves, 21-year-old Madison Mogen, 20-year-old Xana Kernodle, and Kernodle's boyfriend, 20-year-old Ethan Chapin in the early morning hours of November 13 shook the small college town of Moscow, Idaho, which had not recorded a murder since 2015.

The last three episodes of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's Netflix documentary series were released on Thursday.

The first three episodes, released last week, touched on the early days of the couple's relationship, the relentless media attention they've faced and what Harry referred to as "unconscious bias" within the royal family.

These latest installments see Harry detail rifts with his relatives, the toll the last few years has taken on the couple and their new life in California.

READ MORE: Prince Harry says William 'screamed' at him over royal split with Meghan, in final episodes of Netflix documentary

Buckingham Palace reiterated on Thursday that it will not comment on the documentary, and royal engagements are continuing.

Here are 11 things we learned from the second part of the show:

Meghan grateful for relationship with Queen Elizabeth

The duchess spoke about her first royal engagement alongside Harry's grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, shortly after the couple's wedding.

"It was great," she said, describing how the Queen put a blanket over both of their knees on a car journey.

Meghan was glad to have a grandmotherly figure after being so close with her own grandmother.

"I treated her as my husband's grandma," she said. "We laughed."

Popularity causes tensions with other royals

The couple said their popularity with the public caused issues within the royal household, with their tour in Australia being described in the documentary as a turning point.

Harry said Meghan's popularity in particular caused problems at the palace, recalling similarities with his mother Diana, who married into the royal family and was beloved by the public.

"The issue is when someone who's marrying in, who should be a supporting act is then stealing the limelight or is doing the job better than the person who is born to do this. That upsets people. It shifts the balance," Harry said.

The couple recalled how media coverage started to turn negative, with Meghan increasingly associated with racist tropes such as drugs, criminality or terrorism.

Meghan contemplated suicide

Doria Ragland, Meghan's mother, recounted how her daughter told her she had thought about taking her own life after being constantly "picked at by these vultures" in the media.

"That she would actually think of not wanting to be here … That's not an easy one for a mum to hear," said Ragland.

Harry said he "never thought that it would get to that stage," and the fact it did left him feeling "angry and ashamed".

Meghan said she wanted to get help but was prevented from doing so amid concerns that it could affect the image of the institution.

The duchess later discussed her struggles in an official royal documentary, thanking a journalist who asked her how she'd been feeling.

"Not many people have asked if I'm OK," she said.

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More controversy around Archie's birth

The couple recalled how their desire to keep some privacy around the birth of their first child caused a significant backlash.

"The amount of abuse we got … for not wanting to serve our child up on a silver platter was incredible," said Harry.

A narrative developed that the couple were being selfish for not doing a traditional photo call shortly after the birth of a royal baby, and Harry remembers seeing a post on social media of a couple walking either side of a chimpanzee alongside the caption: "Royal baby leaves hospital."

Meghan 'fed to the wolves'

The duchess said she did everything she could to make the royal family "proud," but at one point "the bubble burst" and there was a flood of negative media coverage.

"I realised that I wasn't just being thrown to the wolves, I was being fed to the wolves," she said.

Harry said he believes that the press understood that the palace wasn't going to protect Meghan, and once that happens "the floodgates open".

Duchess received death threats

The documentary touches on how a hate campaign against the couple built on social media, with the primary focus on Meghan.

"The seriousness of what has happened to her and what … happened to us, and what continues to happen to her, that needs to be acknowledged," said Harry.

Meghan recalls how the family's security team has a protocol for when a tweet such as "Meghan just needs to die" is spotted online.

"That's, like, what's actually out in the world because of people creating hate. And I'm a mum," she said. "That's my real life."

"And that's the piece when you see it and you go, 'You are making people want to kill me,'" added the duchess. "It's not just a tabloid. It's not just some story. You are making me scared. Right?"

'Terrifying' row at Sandringham

Harry recalled how he traveled to the royal residence Sandringham for a meeting to discuss the couple's future role in the family.

"It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me and my father say things that simply weren't true, and my grandmother quietly sit there and sort of take it all in," said Harry.

And the relationship between the two brothers continued to worsen.

"The saddest part of it was this wedge created between myself and my brother so that he's now on the institution side," said Harry.

Harry spoke about a joint statement issued in January 2020, in which the brothers denied a newspaper story alleging that a rift in the royal family was caused by William's "bullying attitude".

In this Netflix episode, Harry claims he was not aware of the statement.

"No one had asked me permission to put my name to a statement like that," he said.

"They were happy to lie to protect my brother and yet for three years they were never willing to tell the truth to protect us," he added.

Media coverage blamed for miscarriage

Harry blamed the media for placing undue stress on his wife.

Meghan recounted how she suffered a miscarriage in July 2020 after moving to Santa Barbara, California, recalling how she was stressed about how UK newspaper the Mail on Sunday had published a private letter to her father, Thomas Markle.

"I was pregnant. I really wasn't sleeping. The first morning that we woke up in our new home is when I miscarried," said Meghan.

"I believe my wife suffered a miscarriage because of what the Mail did," Harry added. "I watched the whole thing."

"Now, do we absolutely know the miscarriage was created, caused by that? Course we don't. But bearing in mind the stress that that caused, the lack of sleep, and the timing of the pregnancy, how many weeks in she was, I can say, from what I saw, that miscarriage was created by what they were trying to do to her," he added.

CNN has contacted the Mail on Sunday and its publisher Associated Newspapers Limited for comment.

Hollywood move meant six weeks without press coverage

Harry said it took reporters six weeks to find out that the couple had moved into director and screenwriter Tyler Perry's home in Hollywood, before eventually publishing the location of their new home.

He also recalled measures taken to prevent paparazzi from snapping photos of the couple.

"These large poles are basically the construction of a fence to stop paparazzi from taking photographs from three, four hundred meters away," said Harry. "And as ridiculous and as absurd as this is, you kind of have to laugh about it, because it is madness."

Perry then claims the fence around the property would be cut, people would sneak in and there were "helicopters 24/7."

'No accountability'

Harry talks about going home for his grandfather Prince Philip's funeral in April 2021.

While Harry says that neither he nor the rest of the family wanted to talk about the situation around Harry and Meghan that day, he did discuss it with his father and brother. He said Prince William and King Charles were "focused on the same misinterpretation of the whole situation."

"I've had to make peace with the fact that we're probably never going to get genuine accountability or a genuine apology," said Harry.

California is now 'home'

Harry reminds viewers that Archie spent only the first five months of his life in the UK before the family relocated to California, and daughter Lilibet was born in the US.

"This is home to him, this is home to Lili, and this is our home," said Harry, who added that life is very different for the family in the US. "I get to do things with our kids that I would never be able to do in the UK."