Accused murderer Robert John Adams liked a social drink but he had a volatile personality and was known to "flip", including the time he was asked about missing nurse Mary Louise Wallace, a former friend says.  Witness Ross Adams has told the NSW Supreme Court of two confrontations he had with his former housemate in the late 1980s, with the first occurring during a drinking session at the Gladesville RSL.  Mr Adams said when he got up the courage to ask Adams, who is no relation, whether he knew what happened to "that nurse", his mate turned aggressive.  "He leant over and said, 'what's that to you?' in a menacing manner into my face," Mr Adams told the court on Wednesday.  "I had a sense of that, I don't know ... sense of foreboding," he said.  Mr Adams said he never raised the subject with his former friend again.  Robert John Adams is on trial accused of murdering 33-year-old Ms Wallace, who was last seen leaving a wine bar in his car after a night out in September 1983.  Ross Adams testified he'd read about Ms Wallace's disappearance in the newspaper and had seen a sketch in the paper that looked like Bob.  But he'd thought he should give his friend "the benefit of the doubt" and "let things take their course".  But soon after the Gladesville RSL conversation, in about 1988, the witness said he fled the home they shared in fear of his life after Bob snapped when he said he was moving out.  Adams grabbed him by the back of the neck and shoved his head between his legs so he couldn't breathe.  "I was stuck there and all I could think was, 'don't move, don't say anything' or this is going to get a lot worse," Mr Adams said.  It was the end of his friendship with Adams whom he described as a big drinker with a "variable" personality who could "just flip" occasionally.  Earlier, the court heard that a woman who claimed to have been brutally raped by a man named Bob in 1978 picked Robert John Adams' picture out of a series of photos she was shown in 2013.  NSW Detective Nicole Jones said the woman identified two photographs, and said the one of Adams was most similar to the man who had forced her to have sex in his car while strangling her more than three decades before.  The trial continues on Thursday.
A NSW woman who says she was brutally raped in 1978 picked out a photo of murder suspect Robert John Adams as looking similar to the culprit, a court has heard.