Sydney lawyer accused of hiding her husband’s link to murder after she allegedly tried to wipe CCTV footage at their home

A lawyer allegedly tried to delete CCTV footage linking her husband to a murder, after the couple exchanged frantic and emotional text messages.

In May 2019, Sydney lawyer Alev Rojda Oncu was eager to take some time off when her husband, Ali Cevik, was arrested and charged with murder.

‘We have just over a month for our vacation. Don’t do anything stupid,’ she texted him hours before he and three others committed the heinous crime.

Cevik pleaded guilty to the murder.

The 32-year-old man (pictured) allegedly asked a technician for help on how to clean up the CCTV footage and allegedly told the attending officers that the CCTV cameras did not record.

Oncu, 32, is on trial in Parramatta District Court charged with attempting to destroy camera recordings at her Blacktown home on May 28, 2019 in order to pervert the course of justice or alternatively mislead a judicial court.

“She knew what was on the footage, she tried to destroy it, she knew Ali Cevik had been arrested for murder,” crown prosecutor Philip Hogan told a jury last week.

Details of the proceedings were made public on Tuesday, however details about the murder remain subject to a court order.

The jury played phone calls with Oncu, recorded by the police before the murder, showing Cevik in an emotional state and insulting his wife.

Oncu’s husband (pictured right), Ali Cevik (pictured left), pleaded guilty to the murder of 51-year-old Craig Anderson, who was shot four times outside his Blacktown home on May 27. May 2019 and died at the scene.

Don’t go anywhere tonight. You’re very high, Ali. Come home and do whatever when you’re sober,’ she texted her husband Oncu.

‘If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for me.’

As Cevik languished in a cell at St Mary’s police station after his arrest, Oncu did not know where he was. She texted him that she was scared and missed him.

‘I love you. Please come home,’ she said.

From the police station, Cevik was allowed to call his lawyer.

After a visit in Blacktown by the lawyer where Oncu heard her husband over the loudspeaker, she went below the main house where the CCTV equipment was kept, first with a laundry basket and then with two others carrying a black bag, she heard the judge.

The lawyer was arrested on October 3, 2019 in Blacktown, in the western suburbs of Sydney (pictured)

Oncu’s lawyer, Mike Smith, said she was not involved in the murder and denied asking Mr Norouzi to wipe the hard drive (oncu being arrested in 2019 pictured)

On the night of May 28, he called the technician Salar Norouzi and allegedly asked him how to format the CCTV hard drive.

“He showed him that the hard drive was full and if he hit the reformat button, it would be empty,” Hogan said.

“Then he hit the reformat button, he emptied the hard drive.”

When police later reviewed the footage, they found everything from before Norouzi’s visit had been erased.

Oncu allegedly told the attending officers that the CCTV cameras did not record.

“The Crown says he was lying when he said that,” Hogan said.

In August 2022, the police were able to recover the missing images using updated software.

Craig Anderson, 51, (pictured) was murdered by four men, including Ali Cevik, who pleaded guilty or were found guilty by a jury and a fifth man pleaded guilty to being an accessory.

Oncu’s lawyer, Mike Smith, said she was not involved in the murder and denied asking Norouzi to erase the hard drive.

“The suggestion that Mr. Norouzi was ordered, told or requested by the defendant to remove any archival material is denied in the strongest possible terms. It didn’t happen,’ he said.

Smith asked the jury to carefully review the CCTV footage, saying it did not necessarily show the Crown’s versions of events.

All four men involved in the murder, including Cevik, have either pleaded guilty or been found guilty by a jury. A fifth man pleaded guilty to being an accessory.

The trial with Judge Mark Buscombe continues.