A Supreme Court judge has called on authorities to improve conditions in the Wangaratta Police Station cells before the trial of a man accused of murdering his parents in the north-eastern Victorian town.
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Justice Lex Lasry said Ian Thomas would be held in one of the two police station cells during the expected four-week trial if it went ahead in Wangaratta.
Justice Lasry said he was aware of the shortcomings of keeping someone in custody at the Wangaratta station cells, where the lights were on all night, the cells had to be shared with other prisoners, and there was a lack of access to toiletries, pens, paper and a computer.
The judge said how anyone could endure those conditions during a murder trial was beyond him.
He told the court that unless there were significant changes made to the cells, Mr Thomas's trial would be transferred from Wangaratta to Melbourne.
Justice Lasry adjourned the case to February 27 for a further directions hearing.
Mr Thomas, 35, of Balga, Western Australia, has been charged with murdering his parents, Bill, 64, and Pauline, 63, on April 22 last year at their Great Alpine Road home. The couple had been married for 40 years and had five children.
Justice Lasry rejected a claim by defence barrister Julian McMahon, who had applied to have the trial held in Melbourne, that Mr Thomas would not get a fair trial in Wangaratta because the Thomas family was so well known in the district and it would be hard to find impartial jurors.
The judge said media reports about the case had been dramatic but the subject was dramatic.
A committal hearing held earlier this year in the Wangaratta Magistrates' Court was told Mr Thomas had allegedly confessed to the killings to his married lover, Jacinta Emselle, a day after the murders.
"He said his mum came out to the shed and she was being really awful and she had pushed him too far, so he told me he put his hands around her neck and just squeezed," Ms Emselle said.
She said Mr Thomas told her he then went to the house and lay waiting for his father, Bill, to come home.
He allegedly shot him in his chest before hitting him in the head with a blunt object.
Mr Thomas then allegedly placed his parents' bodies side by side on doonas on the lounge floor.
Police arrested Mr Thomas in Meredith, between Ballarat and Geelong, following the discovery of his parents' bodies.
