Defendant 'lied, and lied and lied to cover his tracks and mislead those trying to get to the bottom of what happened'
A horse trainer murdered Armagh showjumper Katie Simpson then tried to make it look like suicide, a court heard on Tuesday.
He said: “It is the prosecution case the defendant raped Katie. He murdered her. He made efforts to cover up what he had done by trying to make her death look like a suicide. In the hours leading up to death he was with Katie. He was the last person to see her alive. At that time, he was the only person with Katie, or certainly the only adult.”The prosecutor said: “He strangled her and created a fiction, pretending to others that he found Katie hanging in a stairwell.
The lawyer added: “He may say he took medical attention to save her. But the prosecution say that version of events if maintained is untrue. If having heard all the evidence and in fact the defendant assaulted Katie in a manner that caused her to be fatally injured before he set about covering it up, we say you will convict him of murder, but only if you are sure.”
The witness felt Katie, “seemed to be under his spell …But he would shout and be bad-tempered with her”. Mr Magee said: “You have to ask, why was he so irate? What was in that Snap message that made him send such a foul and aggressive text?” Katie began deleting her messages to Mr McCloskey and these would only be discovered by police when his phone was seized after the murder investigation stated, the court heard.
During the return trip he was talking on the phone to a woman called Hayley Robb who was driving to meet him, the court was told. She noticed he seemed eager to keep talking on the phone which she found strange as they would be meeting in a short time. While talking Creswell had arrived hone and entered the house and screamed, “Katie’s hanging. Call an ambulance”.
However Mr Magee told the jury at one point when Creswell was counting out compressions allegedly using in both hands, Katie’s phone which he had retained, had been activated and switched to flight mode. Paramedics arrived and took over, managing to re-start Katie’s heart and stabilise her.
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