Gosport murder trial: Man accused of killing Kelly-Anne Case says mystery person put a knife to his throat

Brendan Rowan-Davies, 29, is being questioned at Winchester Crown Court where he is on trial for the murder of 27-year-old Kelly-Anne Case at her home in Grange Crescent in Gosport.

Prosecutors said her mutilated body was found by firefighters responding to reports of smoke at Ms Case’s home when they saw her dead with her throat repeatedly slit and wrists bound with cable ties. A passer-by saw smoke at 8.23am on July 30, jurors heard.

Rowan-Davies, of Trinity Close, Gosport, had earlier been at the house with his friend Will Vallender. Ms Case had ‘laughed’ at the defendant when he told her that he had ‘always fancied her,’ the court heard.

Giving evidence, the defendant said hours later he returned to her home alone to retrieve his tobacco - and was threatened by an unnamed man who held a knife to his throat.

Rowan-Davies said he knocked on the front door four times. ‘I was going to walk to my mum’s but I saw the gate open,’ he said.

‘The (patio) doors were open.

‘(I) knocked and called out.’

He said he called out ‘Kelly’ twice. Asked by prosecutor William Mousley QC why he went in, he said: ‘See if I could see anybody, which I did.

‘Then I went to talk to Kelly.’

Rowan-Davies said he saw the unnamed man enter the spare room.

The judge asked: 'You saw that, did you?'

He replied: ‘I think so, I was stunned. I didn't know what was happening.’

Asked if he looked at the man, the defendant said: 'I tried to but he was covered up. I couldn't see what he looked like.'

Asked what happened when he went upstairs, he said: ‘A knife to my throat. I felt an arm come over me, and that’s when I seen Kelly.’

Rowan-Davies added: ‘I asked him why he did it, and then he said: “She deserved it.”

‘I said “no-one deserves that”.’

Mr Mousley asked: ‘What happened after that?’

Rowan-Davies said: ‘He pushed me over.

‘He kept the knife to my throat.’

Mr Mousley asked: ‘Where were you then?’

He said: ‘Still by Kelly.’

Rowan-Davies said he then escaped ‘as soon as he moved the knife away’ and ran downstairs, picked up his tobacco before then he ‘ran to the gate and walked from there in shock’.

Mr Mousley said 40 minutes had gone by between the defendant being seen going to and leaving Ms Case's home. 'What had you been doing?' he asked. Rowan-Davies replied: ‘I had a knife to my neck for most of it.’

Asked why he went upstairs, Rowan-Davies said: 'So she didn't think I was breaking in.'

Mr Mousley said a mother walking with her child heard the smoke alarm at Ms Case’s home at 8.23am.

He asked: ‘You don’t emerge until 8.26am walking up the cycle path. Where were you at 8.23am?’

Rowan-Davies said: ‘I don’t know.’

The judge, Mr Justice Neil Garnham, asked: ‘If you’re at the end of the road at 8.26am then half a minute, or a minute, earlier you must have been at (Ms Case’s home), and if you were at (her home) did you hear the alarm go?’

The defendant said: ‘No.’

The judge said: ‘Can you explain that?’

Rowan-Davies said: ‘No. I can’t.’

Mr Mousley asked: ‘Were you in the house when the fires were going?’

Rowan-Davies said: ‘No.’

Rowan-Davies denies murder and arson.

(Proceeding)