‘It’s difficult for you too,’ she pointed out. ‘I want to come.’
I didn’t argue with her. When Anjie decided she wanted to do something, usually there was nothing you could do to change her mind. I just hoped she would be able to cope with a day listening to the garbage that spouted from her son’s mouth as he tried to explain why he took away the girl Anjie had loved as her own daughter.
The proceedings didn’t resume until midday the next day, so it meant that Anjie and I could take our time getting ready. I was pleased it wasn’t an early start, as sitting in court for just half a day would be easier for her to cope with.
It started with a bang, though, as the first thing the jury was shown was a video of Nathan’s interview with the police, after his account of killing Becky had been handed over. Scruffily dressed in a navy T-shirt, Nathan was crying loudly and had his head in his hands. He begged the police not to read the confession out loud, or to use Shauna’s name during questioning.
I hoped that the jury wouldn’t feel any sort of empathy with him. He looked and sounded like a complete maniac, angrily wiping away tears and saying that he might have got the kidnap idea from television or from a couple of dreams he’d had. I reached across and grabbed Anjie’s hand as the video was playing, and she stared straight ahead. It was hard to guess what was going through her mind as she watched Nathan admit to killing Becky. She just looked desperately sad.
We were also shown early police interviews with Shauna, in which she said that Nathan had been violent and controlling to her in the past. After hearing what Nathan had admitted to doing, Shauna claimed that she was always slightly scared of him. I shook my head with disbelief. Although I knew Nathan had shown signs of jealousy and paranoia around her, I highly doubted that Shauna was ever actually frightened of him. Like Nathan’s nan, Margaret, had said, Shauna often gave the impression that she was the dominant one in the relationship. Anjie and I both thought that she was the smarter of the two, and if anyone was a bully in the relationship, it was her.
When quizzed about the noise that must have been coming from the bathroom as Nathan cut up Becky’s body, Shauna said that she had believed Nathan when he told her that the toilet was blocked and that he was fixing a pipe. In all further interviews with Shauna, she continued to deny having anything to do with Becky’s death.
The following Monday, 26 October, Detective Constable Claire Langley read a transcript to the court of an interview carried out the day after Becky’s dismembered body was discovered.
The police officer asked Shauna what she knew about Becky’s body being taken into the house she shared with Nathan.
She replied, ‘Nothing. No idea whatsoever.’
The officer then asked, ‘What was the plan when Becky’s body was put in your house?’
Shauna said, ‘I have no idea. I’m feeling sick to know she was there. Appalled, disgusted, outrageously angry. I think I’m feeling that I’m going to wake up and it’s not actually happening. I’m really confused why he thought he could get away with it. I felt sick looking at him, knowing what he had done. She was a nice enough girl, so young. I don’t understand how he could have done it.’
The police officer then told Shauna that she was in the house when Becky was killed, in the car used to carry Becky’s body in the boot, and at the house she shared with Nathan, which was used to cut up the teenager’s body.
‘You can see the picture I’m painting,’ said the officer.
‘Yes, I know it looks bad,’ Shauna replied.
She cried throughout the recording, adding that she was not trying to cover up for Nathan. ‘There is still a part of me that cares for him, but it is more anger and disgust that has taken over. He is just sick, literally physically sick,’ she sobbed. ‘If that was his intent to just scare her like that it is just so twisted and wrong. I don’t understand his logic, his theory, his justification. I couldn’t live in a house knowing he had just viciously killed somebody who in my mind – in everyone’s mind – didn’t deserve it.
‘You can imagine the suffering she went through – how scared she was – and to know I was right there. She deserved to live her life. She didn’t do anything wrong. She was not always the nicest person, but she didn’t do anything bad.’
We then listened as Shauna was asked about searching the Internet for the ‘Do You Want to Hide a Body?’ video. She told officers that she had searched for it as a joke to cheer Nathan up, claiming at that point she didn’t know what had happened to Becky. It took everything in me not to shout out across the court that she was a complete liar. I hoped that the jury were thinking the same as I was, the same as Anjie was. We’d have to wait and see.
On Tuesday, 27 October, Anjie and I woke up and looked at each other wearily. It was the first day of Nathan’s defence, meaning that he would be in the witness box. Anjie was more determined than ever to come to court that day, even though we were all worried about the effect it would have on her health, both mentally and physically. She had been worn out after the previous time, finding it dreadfully upsetting and that was only half a day. Sam and Sarah came to support us again, along with my dad and Denise. Tanya, Pat and Danny were there too. I worried about poor Danny, still only twenty years old, hearing all the gruesome details about his little sister’s murder, but he insisted that he had to try to understand what was going through Nathan’s head. He had to try to make sense of it.
As I pushed Anjie into the courtroom, I was buzzing with nervous energy. It was day fourteen of the trial, and it was going to be the first day I would be able to get a clear view of Nathan. Until then, he had been sitting at the back of the dock, where we couldn’t see him or Shauna clearly. Now, I would be able to look the murderer who took my little girl away from me in the eye, and see what he had to say for himself. It was a strange feeling, because even though I couldn’t wait to see Nathan on the stand, I had to think of Anjie’s feelings too. It was her son being tried for murder. Sometimes I forgot that.
Before Nathan was called to the stand, the prosecution closed its case by telling the jury that police had discovered a porn film of a teenager being raped on a laptop belonging to Nathan. I was horrified when we heard that the film had a scene in which a man tied the rape victim’s hands together, covered her mouth with his hand and slapped her face. I glanced at Anjie, who looked distraught as the similarities to the attack on Becky dawned on her. I gave her hand a squeeze.
After a short break, Nathan was called up. My heart was hammering in my chest as he slowly made his way to the witness box. He looked smaller than he used to. Hunched over, with his eyes fixed on the floor, he was a complete shell of himself. He was wearing a white jumper with a light-blue shirt underneath, and had dark circles under his eyes, looking as if he hadn’t slept for weeks. I wondered if he would glance in our direction as my eyes bored into him, but he didn’t dare.
His barrister, Adam Vaitilingam, asked him to confirm his name and age, and his voice faltered as he answered. One by one, Adam took him through the charges he faced. Nathan pleaded guilty to manslaughter, but when Adam asked him if, while carrying out his plan to kidnap Becky, he had intended to murder her or cause her serious harm, he suddenly started sobbing.
‘No, I didn’t,’ he cried. He rested his head on his arms as he gave his answer.
Rage consumed me as I watched Anjie start to cry. I hated him with all my soul for what he had done to our family – to Anjie, to me, to Danny, and to all our extended family.
During questioning, Nathan said he suffered from fibromyalgia, which left him in constant pain. He claimed he suffered to such an extent that he would collapse in pain from sneezing. I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. If he was in that much pain, how the hell did he manage to kill and dismember a sixteen-year-old girl?
‘What about your relationship with your stepsister, Becky?’ Adam asked. ‘What was that like?’
‘It was good when we were younger. It was civil when she got older,’ Nathan replie
d.
When Adam asked him about Anjie being diagnosed with MS, Nathan starting crying again. He sipped some water before replying, ‘I was really worried. She is nice and kind and would do anything for anyone and not expect anything back in return.’
I narrowed my eyes and shook my head slowly. It stuck in my throat that Nathan was pretending to care about his mother after everything he had put her through. She gripped my hand tightly as he denied ever threatening Becky but added that his kidnap plan was motivated by the way he had seen Becky treat Anjie.
‘The main problem was that Becky would leave things on the stairs or in the kitchen in places where my mum would walk,’ he said quietly. ‘My mum could have fallen over and been seriously injured. She talked to my mum like dirt. She used to swear at her.’
Anjie shook her head at this.
Adam then asked Nathan to explain to the court what happened on the day Becky died. I could feel Anjie shaking beside me, and I squeezed her hand again to comfort her. It must have been unbearable for her to hear Nathan using her as an excuse for murder.
‘I was going to scare Becky,’ Nathan said, as he twisted a tissue around his fingers. ‘I had the thought for a couple of months. I knew my mum was going out for the appointment. It was an opportunity.
‘My plan was to get her in the suitcase and get her in the car and drive off. I hadn’t decided exactly which of the locations I had thought of. Basically, to tell her you have to treat people better – you have to change the way you are with people.
‘I knocked on the door. The door was opened and straight away I used the Sellotape around Becky’s mouth,’ he said. ‘She turned around and I think I said something along the lines of: “As long as you do as you’re told you are going to be fine.” She got down on to her knees and I got the handcuffs. I put the handcuffs on her hands, from behind. I was getting her into the suitcase when my mask slipped and my hands went over her eyes. I took the mask off and Sellotaped over her eyes.’
I was barely breathing as I listened, picturing the terror my little Bex must have experienced. She would have been petrified. I came out in goosebumps imagining what she must have been thinking, especially after Nathan had threatened to kill her so many times before. Nathan said that he was using a deeper voice so she wouldn’t know it was him, but I was sure she must have realised. Who else could it be?
He sniffed as he explained that Becky didn’t resist until he attempted to put her into the suitcase.
‘That’s when she started wriggling and resisting,’ he said. ‘I got my fingers on her nose to restrict her breathing, so that she would pass out. Then I tried getting her back into the suitcase, saying, “Don’t struggle, you will be released unharmed,” and she was still refusing to get into the suitcase.’
Nathan paused for a second before continuing. I willed him to look over at us and see Anjie sobbing uncontrollably. The selfish bastard had broken her heart. He claimed that he attacked Becky because he was trying to protect his mum, but I wanted him to see what he had actually done to her. No matter how long she lived, she would never recover from this.
‘I thought to knock her out,’ Nathan said slowly. ‘I remember punching her just once.
‘I didn’t feel comfortable trying to do it that way because there would be a lot of pain.’
Beside me, Sam was shaking violently on the edge of his seat. His eyes were blazing with anger, and he looked as though he was ready to fly across the court and go for Nathan. I felt the same, but this was unusual for Sam, who was otherwise quiet and gentle.
‘The last thing I did was try to make her pass out, which is something we did at school – it’s like strangling but it doesn’t completely restrict the air. People at school would pass out. Some would take a minute, some would take fifteen or twenty seconds, at a guess. After that, she stopped kicking. I moved her head and her legs and tried to position her in the suitcase. Then I picked up all the other bits. Something didn’t seem right with her breathing. I checked for a pulse and she didn’t have one.’
I clutched my face in my hands. Had my poor darling Bex’s life been snuffed out just like that? I was sure there had been more of a struggle than he was letting on, and I was pretty sure Shauna had been involved too. I shot a look of pure hatred across the room at Nathan, but he was still far too cowardly to glance in our direction.
Anjie let out a huge, choked-up sob, which echoed across the courtroom. On hearing his mother cry, Nathan broke down in tears, hunching over and laying his head on the stand. I didn’t believe he truly cared: Nathan was crying for himself, nobody else. To me, he was the lowest of the low.
I tried to comfort Anjie as best I could while struggling to keep my anger in check. The court was adjourned for a short break, Nathan was led out of the room, and I turned and gave Anjie a huge hug. She was crying loudly now, and the sound was awful. I almost broke down as well, but I was afraid that if I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop. The only way I could get through this whole trial was by keeping my emotions under control as much as possible.
When the court resumed, Nathan was led back in, and he sat down and put his hands out in front of him, lacing his fingers. He was asked why, if Becky’s death was an accident, he didn’t go straight to the police.
He said, ‘I didn’t want anybody to know what actually happened. It was the panic of everybody finding out and being hurt. I went in the bedroom and got her phone, laptop and tablet thing, and make-up and clothes, and chucked them in the black bag to make it look like she had just gone off somewhere.’
Courtney and I hadn’t noticed any of Becky’s things missing when we searched her room the day after she disappeared, but maybe he hadn’t taken clothes or make-up she normally used.
Nathan said that he used the stun gun on Becky, but it didn’t work. He took the handcuffs off her and threw them in the suitcase, which he put straight into the boot of his car.
‘Everything happened really quickly,’ he said. He then told the court how he put Becky’s body in the boot and tried to act normally in front of Shauna and, later on, Anjie.
He claimed, ‘I didn’t tell Shauna. I wanted to hide it from her. The suitcase stayed in the car. Some time that night or in the early hours of the morning, I decided to dismember Becky’s body. I bought drain cleaner to dissolve the body but that didn’t work.’
Anjie started crying again, and I clenched my jaw to stop myself shouting out across the court how sick he was.
‘You vile piece of shit,’ I muttered under my breath. It was obscene to be talking about her in this way, just disgusting. She was my daughter, not a ‘body’. She was a loving, fun, gorgeous girl, and he’d treated her like you wouldn’t treat an animal.
Nathan was then asked about his state of mind at the time he cut up Becky’s body.
‘I just did it. I tried not to look. I did it, like, and it was just surreal. That’s the only way I can explain it,’ he said slowly. ‘I was just doing what I had to do to protect everybody else, stop them finding out that she’s gone.’
He then explained that he offered Karl Demetrius £10,000 from money he and Shauna had in their ISA accounts in exchange for his help moving items and storing them. He chose him because he couldn’t think of anyone else. He said that he watched as Demetrius and James Ireland put them into the shed, and he told them not to look in the boxes. The court had heard earlier that Ireland believed the boxes were something to do with a robbery.
We were all relieved when the proceedings ended that day, as we were badly shaken up. Anjie had slumped right down in her wheelchair and didn’t have the strength to sit upright any more. She looked frail and exhausted. The day had obviously been harrowing for her, as it had been for me. We already knew Nathan’s story, of course, but hearing it come out of his mouth was incredibly difficult. Ziggy and Jo tried their best to look after us, but we were engulfed by anger and grief, imagining the horror of Becky’s last moments of life.
Nathan was to be cross-examined by the p
rosecution on 29 October, which we knew was going to be stressful. When I opened my eyes that morning, I felt an overwhelming sense of dread, but I knew I had to go. Anjie said that she was determined to make it to court too. I think she wanted to see if Nathan would ever actually look her in the eye, but I was sure he wouldn’t. He was far too much of a coward.
The jury first heard that Nathan accessed porn almost every day, downloading and streaming multiple videos, including a lot of teen porn in which actresses who were over eighteen would dress like schoolgirls. He denied that he was sexually attracted to Becky, but admitted that he had always been attracted to teenage girls. The court heard how Nathan had tried to contact a sixteen-year-old girl on Facebook because he fancied her. I wondered if that girl now realised what a narrow escape she’d had.
William Mousley began his cross-examination of Nathan by accusing him of peddling lies to Anjie and me for days on end after Becky’s death.
I fixed my eyes on Nathan, and he slumped slightly before giving his answer.
‘I had no choice; I couldn’t tell them,’ he said.
The jury then heard that when Luke had visited the house looking for Becky on the day of her murder, her body was lying a few feet away in the boot of Nathan’s car.
William looked at him hard for a moment before speaking.
‘You repeatedly lied about what happened to Becky, didn’t you?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Nathan said, sobbing.
‘And when you were arrested you lied for as long as you could in interviews with the police? What was it that made you come up with your prepared statement?’ he quizzed.
‘My emotions all came out. I broke down in front of the solicitor. I basically admitted it, not in so many words. He saw that I was struggling,’ Nathan answered.
Rage built up inside me as I watched him sitting there, feeling sorry for himself. William’s eyes were still fixed on Nathan as he accused him of changing his story and only admitting things he couldn’t avoid in order to keep Shauna out of it.
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