Murdered Sydney businessman Morgan Huxley and his former girlfriend Jessica Hall. Photo: Supplied
As Morgan Huxley took what would be his final steps, a figure walks 100 metres behind him. A man dressed in chequered pants and a long-sleeved black chef's jacket starts to quicken his pace.
When he reaches the Oaks Hotel on Military Road in Neutral Bay, he breaks into a jog. Then he runs. The ginger-haired man is carrying a satchel over his shoulder and catches up to Huxley, who is waiting at a set of traffic lights.
Less than 90 minutes later the satchel he is carrying will be stained with blood, police will allege.
Huxley was a popular small-business owner who had spent a sunny Saturday afternoon at a friend's engagement party on Sydney's north shore. The party staggered from the afternoon late into the night.
The 31-year-old caught a taxi back to Neutral Bay some time after midnight on September 8.
Barefoot and dressed in a pale blue T-shirt and shorts, Huxley walks up the stairs of the Oaks' Ben Boyd Road entrance at 1.01am.
The accused: Daniel Jack Kelsall. Photo: Supplied
After leaving the bar about 1.30am he stands on the pavement opposite Crust Gourmet Pizza Bar for several minutes. He does not talk to anyone.
Hard to miss at 189 centimetres tall, the former Hunters Hill High student turned on to busy Military Road, headed for his unit less than 100 metres away.
Police will allege Daniel Jack Kelsall followed Huxley to a busy intersection and struck up a conversation. Homicide detectives believe Kelsall, 20, was hoping the pair would engage in some form of sexual activity.
Sydney Cooking School owner Brett Deverall said security footage showed them walking across the road, in the direction of Huxley's unit, less than 30 metres away.
It is the last time Huxley is seen alive before his Irish flatmate Jean Redmond heard a noise in a bedroom.
Police said she was home at the time and found Huxley wearing only a T-shirt and suffering from more than a dozen stab and slash wounds to his neck and left side.
A distressed Redmond called triple-0 at 3.01am. Paramedics arrived four minutes later.
Huxley's injuries caused him to go into a traumatic cardiac arrest and paramedics spent the next 23 minutes trying to revive him.
He was pronounced dead on arrival at Royal North Shore Hospital.
As daylight approached, the Huxley family learnt of the horrific way in which the popular larrikin had met with his death.
It was the day after the federal election and, as votes continued to be counted, police began an investigation which would span four weeks.
As police trawled through phone records, security footage and searched for a murder weapon, the rumour mill on Sydney's north shore went into overdrive.
Many speculated over lattes, neighbouring fences and school drops-offs as to which “jilted lover” might have killed Huxley.
Police said they were investigating Huxley's links with up to 14 women and many of his ex-girlfriends were splashed across the pages and screens of Sydney's media.
But homicide detectives were gathering as much evidence as they could for case against a 20-year-old homosexual man.
More than a dozen Military Road business owners said detectives showed them a picture of a man in the weeks leading up to Kelsall's arrest.
Police believe the pair did not know each other. But they certainly would recognise one another and possibly chatted at the many Neutral Bay shops at which they both ate.
Huxley also drank coffee at the Chef and Barista, the business which shared the same premises at Sydney Cooking School, where Kelsall said he worked as a chef's assistant.
While Huxley was almost a permanent fixture at the Oaks Hotel, Kelsall spent every day at a cluster of takeaway shops across the road.
Every single employee at Crust Pizza, Thai-in-a-box, Paddy's Pies and Curry Palace on Ben Boyd Road remembered a ginger-haired loner who was never without a paperback novel in hand.
He would often dine by himself and always carried his “chef kit” with him. On occasions, his New-Zealand born father Mark, would eat with him.
Homicide detectives swooped on the Kelsall family's Spruson Street unit at 9.30am on Tuesday, October 8.
The 20-year-old was dressed in a brown-hooded jacket and clutched a worn paperback copy of the fantasy novel Magician as police took him into custody.
He was charged with one count of murder and larceny and chose not to appear in court that afternoon.
The accused's father spoke of his family's anguish a day after his son's arrest.
"We are all in shock," Mark Kelsall said. "We really feel for the Huxleys but we can't say much more at this stage."
Magician, by Raymond E. Feist, tells the story of Pug, an orphaned kitchen-hand who becomes a magician's apprentice.
It was the first book of 30 written as part of the series known to fans as the Riftwar Cycle.
More than 30 years after the book was written, Feist brought his much-loved series to an end in May this year.
The blurb to Magician's End reads: “Now it will all end. Readers will finally discover the fate of the original black Magician, Pug, and his friends. Will they survive? Or will someone die?”
Kelsall will appear in court next Tuesday where his lawyer, George Breton, said his client would “potentially” make an application for bail.
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