A lawyer knew her husband was connected to criminal activity and tried to destroy evidence linking him to a murder because she couldn't live without him, jurors have heard.
As Ali Cevik was in a police cell in the early hours of May 28, 2019, his wife Alev Rojda Oncu desperately tried to find out what had happened.
"I can’t do life without you," she texted after his arrest.
Crown prosecutors allege this spurred the 32-year-old Sydney solicitor to try deleting CCTV footage from her Blacktown home which showed Cevik leaving with another man hours before the murder.
"She did it, the Crown says, so that she wouldn't have to do life without him," prosecutor Philip Hogan said on Thursday.
Cevik was arrested for participating in a criminal group but eventually pleaded guilty to the murder, details of which cannot be published under court order.
Oncu herself has pleaded not guilty to attempting to destroying evidence to pervert the course of justice or, alternatively, mislead a judicial tribunal.
She met her husband when he was a mixed martial arts fighter, got married and bought a home.
Cevik then became involved in drugs and people with a "bad reputation".
"Life's looking good except that Ali Cevik had gone off the rails but ... she can't do life without him,” Mr Hogan told Parramatta District Court.
Hours before the murder, a call with Cevik allegedly made the solicitor aware her husband was about to commit serious criminal activity.
"I don't know if I come home tonight. The things I'm about to do, it's not going to be OK," he said.
The following day after police visited her house, Oncu unsuccessfully tried to unplug the CCTV system located in their bedroom before calling technician Salar Norouzi.
“She told him that she wanted to erase the footage," Mr Hogan said.
When police reviewed the CCTV hard drive, they found everything had disappeared from before when Mr Norouzi attended.
In August 2022, police were able to retrieve the missing footage using updated software.
This material showed Cevik leaving prior to the murder plus Oncu, after her husband's arrest, going underneath the main house with a laundry basket and then meeting a man and a woman who took a black bag to dispose of in the park behind the home.
Oncu's barrister Mike Smith said prosecutors had twisted the facts to fit allegations his client wanted to destroy the recordings.
"‘Every fact and circumstance ... that you have has been twisted and tortured and stretched and shoved into a box to suit that theory,” he told jurors.
Mr Smith stressed Oncu was not on trial for being a "really, really, really, really bad judge of her husband".
The 32-year-old could not have plotted the alleged scheme as she was "technologically hopeless" and not a very smart lawyer who failed subject after subject, including criminal law.
Mr Norouzi erased the footage and lied about Oncu asking him to do so after realising police wanted the hard drive and wrongly thinking he could be criminally charged, the jury heard.
"He is exposed for the pack of contradictions and uncertainty and lies that he is," Mr Smith said.
He added it was also unlikely Oncu believed her husband was involved in serious criminal activity because he was a "drug-addled mess" who couldn't even put his shoes on.
Earlier on Thursday, Oncu gave evidence saying she had no reason to think anything in her Blacktown home would have been relevant to police.
She denied asking anyone to delete the footage.
"I would never do anything to obstruct or to mislead the system in general," she told the court.
Four men involved in the murder, including Cevik, either pleaded guilty or were found by a jury to be guilty. A fifth man pleaded guilty to being an accessory.
Judge Mark Buscombe will sum up the case on Friday before the jury starts deliberations.
