SYDNEY, Jan 31: A man kept his wife’s body in a drum container at the family home for 23 years after pretending she had run off with another man, Australian prosecutors said Thursday.

Frederick William Boyle, 58, of the Melbourne suburb of Carrum Downs, faces a charge of murder, which he denies.

Boyle is alleged to have shot his wife Edwina Boyle in the head, dismembered her, and hidden her body.

“He put her body in a 44-gallon drum and kept it for 20 years,” prosecutor Gavin Silbert told the Victorian Supreme Court on the first day of the trial.

Edwina Boyle disappeared in October 1983, Silbert told the court, and her husband claimed at the time she had run off with a truck driver called Ray.

He did not report her missing and informed relatives in England not to be surprised if they did not hear from her at Christmas that year.

But in 2006, while cleaning up, his son-in-law Michael Hegarty decided to cut open the drum, which had been kept at the family home for many years.

Prosecutors said he had asked for 14 years what was in the drum and had been told it contained glue for carpet laying.—AFP