As a prominent Perth lawyer, Alice McShera specialised in family law and restraining orders.
On Tuesday, she was the subject of similar matters when her on-again, off-again partner Cameron Pearson was jailed for life over McShera’s brutal murder in a Crown Towers hotel room in 2023.
McShera, 34, was getting ready for a night out on October 30, 2023 when Pearson claimed the couple got into an argument after she said she was going to leave him.
“I just lost it,” he admitted, later telling police: “We had an altercation … I hit her in the head.”
The court heard on Tuesday that Pearson hit McShera between five and nine times in the face and the back of the head with a champagne bottle before covering her body with towels and then “chilling out in the room”.
The following morning, he used a broken champagne glass to self-harm, before he was found by hotel staff in the bath after they conducted a welfare check on McShera.
McShera’s father had called the hotel, the court heard, and asked staff to check on her, but when they knocked on the hotel door Pearson refused to let them in.
They returned later with a security card to get inside and equipment to cut a chain on the door.
Drugs and volatility
The court heard on Tuesday that Pearson, a 43-year-old father of one, met McShera at the end of 2022 when she helped him with family court matters.
A month later, they were in a relationship that was marred by volatility and drug use on both sides, the court was told.
Pearson had a criminal history relating to drug use and McShera was partial to taking meth with him “on occasion”. On the night she died, she had methamphetamine and alcohol in her system.
She was a barrister at Murray Chambers, a boutique Perth law firm, where she specialised in child support, family law and restraining orders.
He was a boilermaker, had worked in the defence force and fly-in, fly-out jobs, but at the time of their relationship he was unemployed.
Pearson told therapists he had planned to marry McShera, but that she had earlier told him she didn’t love him.
Their relationship went through repeated stages of breaking up and getting back together, but on the night she died, they were described as going through a “reconciliation phase”.
The court was told that Pearson did not kill McShera with any premeditation or planning.
“I had a couple of vodkas, she was dancing around, said she might leave me and I just lost it and hit her over the head with the bottle,” he told police.
“I was angry at her.”
Pearson told police he was not in his “right mind with sleep deprivation, meth use and alcohol use” but that he later “deeply regretted” his actions and had written to McShera’s family expressing deep remorse and full responsibility.
Victim impact statements tendered to the court described McShera as kind, loving and generous with a passion for the law, in particular in relation to the prevention of violence against women and children.
A large section of Perth’s legal fraternity were in court on Tuesday to witness Peason’s sentencing, including District Court Judge Linda Black.
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