On a February evening in 2023, Krystle Monks sent a text to her mother. “I want to come home. I’m sick of being here,” she wrote.
Monks, 19, had been staying at the house of her boyfriend Michael Kurt Pringle, in Ipswich, south-west of Brisbane.
Her mother offered an Uber for her daughter to come home. But at 9pm, she received a reply saying not to worry about it. The mother asked what was going on, but there were no further messages.
And soon, paramedics arrived at Pringle’s home.
Blood and vomit was found in multiple locations, a forensic examination of the house revealed.
On the wall, on the top doona cover on the bed, on the carpet in the bedroom, and throughout other parts of the house, according to Supreme Court documents released for the first time.
There also appeared to be some kind of clean up in the property, according to forensic officers.
Monks had suffered a brain injury, and was rushed to hospital under lights and sirens.
It was only once the mother joined her daughter at the Princess Alexandra Hospital that she learnt Monks was pregnant.
The court documents for Pringle’s application for bail detail his claims to police about what allegedly happened that night.
The call for help
“Um, so my partner was, has been drinking and has been like, not going off but she’s been yelling a fair bit at me and she was in a heightened state before,” Pringle says when he calls for an ambulance at 9.15pm.
“Then she was trying to jump on the bed, hit her head on the cabinet and she’s, I don’t know what’s going on. It’s like she’s fainted or something.”
When paramedics arrive they observe Pringle’s mother, who appears calm. One advanced care paramedic notes this was strange given people usually run to the ambulance to get them to the patient quicker.
Pringle tells the paramedic the pair had had an argument, Monks had gone to jump on the bed, before hitting her head on the shelves, which aren’t in the room they’re standing in. The paramedic recalls how Pringle says the fall did not happen in that room. “It was in the other room”.
He says: “She is also pregnant.”
Another paramedic recalled how Pringle had told him about the argument, and her jumping on the bed and falling. “She had done a pregnancy test that morning and had a faint positive line. She also has a history of bipolar”.
Responding paramedics were of the opinion that Pringle’s version of a very recent strike to the head was inconsistent with Monks’ severe level of unconsciousness. A pathologist later identified Monks had 15 distinct areas of bruising to her head.
The bed also had no creases, police noted. The doona on the bed was neatly made, which they said was inconsistent with Pringle’s version that Monks was jumping on the bed.
Monks allegedly suffered a protracted assault, with a multitude of injuries including defensive ones on her arms and legs.
Pringle’s Google searches
Pringle tells police the pair had been arguing over the password to his phone. He explains Monks ended up storming inside and running down the hallway to their bedroom.
Pringle says he followed Monks inside, and she was yelling, calling him names.
“I heard two massive bangs and I saw Krystle going backwards and hit her head on the white cabinet up against my bedroom wall,” he says.
Pringle rushed into the room, he claims, as Monks was on the floor.
He rolled her onto her back, and recalled how Monks was trying to talk, but it sounded muffled and slurred.
“I remember hearing her trying to say ‘messages’. I was trying to talk to her and asking if she was alright,” he says.
“She was not responding to me and I was worried that she was having a seizure or had fainted.”
Pringle says he yelled for his mother, picking Monks up and bringing her to his mother’s room.
He claims he immediately called for an ambulance.
Prosecutors allege Pringle pretended to be Monks and texted her mother back at 8.52pm about not needing to be picked up.
At 9.03pm, he googled: “Can people faint”.
At 9.10pm he searched: “What is the best way to lay someone if they fainted”. He also searched: “What is the best way to lay someone if they are in shock”.
At 9.15pm, he called Triple Zero. According to prosecution documents, he lied when telling them she had fallen from the bed about five minutes before he called.
The alleged clean-up
Almost a week after the incident, Pringle is interviewed by detectives, where he talks about his on and off relationship with Monks. That day, he says he took Monks to work and “everything was fine all day long. Everything was sweet”.
But Pringle doesn’t pick up his girlfriend from work, and instead his mother does because he had been at home drinking, he told the officers.
The bickering started again about him trying to hide his phone, he claims. She was just “so f—-n’ angry”, he says.
The police put to Pringle there were about 60 messages between the pair between 8.19pm and 8.30pm. Pringle calls her a “lying dog” in them, and they argue over videos, according to documents.
The police ask him why there is blood and vomit on his bedroom floor. Pringle denies vomit being in the room.
Police press him, saying there’s a pool of blood on his bedroom floor.
“Drops of blood on the floor, what I remember,” Pringle answers.
He tells police everything happened so fast. “Like I just keep having pictures of what happened when I was looking at Krystle on, on the phone with the ambulance and running them through”.
He’s also pressed on why there’s vomit on Monks’ shorts, which were found in his mother’s ensuite. He says he does not know why.
They say blood appeared to have been cleaned up in his room. “Yeah I did that. With a cloth,” Pringle answers.
Pringle says that night his mother left the house at some stage because she did not want to hear the arguments between him and Monks, but cannot remember when.
One officer puts to him: “Krystle went into that house a healthy 19-year-old, and she left going to the hospital and dying.” He says Monks suffered serious fractures that required a “significant amount of force”.
Pringle responds: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Like I don’t know what you’re trying to imply here.”
Pringle denies striking her in the face. He explains he “wasn’t even angry or anything.” “I was sort of laughing the fact of, about the things with the phone.”
At one point in the interview, one officer puts to Pringle that Monks was dead because of “something that happened inside that house.”
“She now has a grieving family,” the officer says.
Pringle says he’s grieving too. “Do you know how f—ing hard it’s been for me? I’ve been left in the dark from all youse. You haven’t been telling me anything. I’ve only been seeing on social media what happened to her. Like that’s my f—ing partner”. He says: “nobody else can sit there and say that they were with her and they’ve been with her, and all this.”
Police begin to question Pringle about his mother’s versions of events that night. The mother had reported not seeing any blood of bodily fluid anywhere in the room.
“Why would [your] mum say there’s no blood and you’re saying there’s blood?”
Pringle answers: “I don’t know, because she didn’t see what I seen I guess. Like I don’t know what to say back to that.
“Ah, I think I’m gonna have to get a lawyer. Right now.”
The messages
Days before Christmas, Pringle had argued with his mother over text at 4.45am. Pringle had fired off a message, telling her to get out of the way, and accusing her of starting problems between the couple.
The mother had replied “I don’t like that side of you … hitting a woman is a coward act and I have told you that.”
Pringle questioned about the hit and asked what his mother was talking about. “I slapped her coz she fkn keep going mate. That c— thinks she can hit me grab me.”
Pringle’s mother told police how that night she had been outside smoking about 8.30pm when she heard a loud thud. She immediately went inside and found her son standing into the doorway of the bedroom.
“He said something like ‘ah f–k’, as if surprised about something,” she said.
Monks eventually got up, the mother claims, while grabbing her head. Monks made it to the lounge room before appearing to collapse, the mother recalled.
She says Monks vomited after hitting the floor.
The mother urged Pringle to pick Monks up and put her onto her bed.
She got a hand towel and wet it before using it on Monks, noticing a small amount of blood near her nostril and laboured breathing, she claimed.
Pringle called the ambulance, she says, and Monks vomited again, frothy fluid coming out of her mouth.
“I was nervous and scared for Krystle … Michael looked to be in shock over what had happened. He just had a look of disbelief on his face.”
The prosecution allege at some stage during the night the mother left the house until Pringle called her at 8.48pm. The prosecution says the inference is that the mother was not home, or not near her son and Monks such that she could not have witnessed the assault.
Pringle’s defence, when applying for bail, claimed the issues at trial would be whether, and if so, how he caused Monks’ death.
His accounts to medical and police personnel, both formal and informal, and voluntary without a lawyer, were “relatively consistent”, documents state.
“There is no eyewitness to the alleged event causing death except [Pringle]. He denies causing death,” his application reads.
Pringle’s case remains before the court.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.
Read the full article here
