Son told police parents weren't getting along before mum disappeared
The son of a Queensland man who confessed to burying his wife's body but denied murdering her told police at the time his parents were not getting along before his mum disappeared.
Edmund Ian Riggs, 60, is being tried for the murder of Patricia Anne Riggs on September 30, 2001, at their home in Margate.
He pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to interfering with her corpse.
Mr Riggs has admitted burying her body at an undisclosed spot, digging it up a few years later and burying it again at the family home.
A 2001 police interview with then nine-year-old Edgar "Ned" Riggs, one of four children, was played to the Brisbane Supreme Court jury on Tuesday.
In it Ned, now 27, tells police he had said goodnight to his mother that night but never saw her again.
He says he woke up in the middle of the night and tried to get into his parents' room but the door was chocked. He was told to "go away".
Ned later heard footstep going up and down the stairs and the garage door opening and shutting. He thought it may have been a burglar.
When he noticed his mother wasn't home the next morning, the boy asked Mr Riggs: "Where's mum?"
Mr Riggs responded he didn't know, while Ned believed she may have been visiting relatives in Canberra.
He said his parents were getting along "good" on the night of her disappearance but "not that well" in the weeks prior.
Mr Riggs denied the murder charge although his barrister Lars Falongreen told the trial it would not be disputed that Patricia died that night in the course of an argument.
Her whereabouts were unknown until a new occupant of their home was digging in the backyard and discovered bones wrapped in swimming pool lining under a shed.
The trial continues.
AAP