The home of the couple accused of murdering Becky Watts was piled high with rubbish and clutter and smelled of cat faeces, but the bathroom where the the Bristol teenager is believed to have been dismembered was clean, a court has heard.
Two police detectives told how Nathan Matthews looked pale and had dark circles under his eyes when he greeted them at the home he shared with Shauna Hoare five days after the 16-year-old was killed.
DC Lisa Aruthen said: “He immediately welcomed us inside. He apologised for the state of the property. It was extremely cluttered. There were all manner of items and stuff piled around. There was a smell I attributed to cat faeces.”
Hoare was on a double bed upstairs. “There was barely any interaction,” Aruthen said. “She didn’t interact with myself or my colleague. The bedroom appeared to be the main living area. It was piled high with all sorts of clutter. On one side of the bed there was a toaster, kettle and condiments such as ketchup.”
The prosecution claims Becky was killed in the bedroom of her home and her body moved to Matthews and Hoare’s house. Police believe she was dismembered in the bathroom and by the time the two detectives arrived the remains had been hidden in a neighbour’s shed.
DC Simon Wallis, who went to the couple’s home with Aruthen, said the bathroom door was shut, with a towel rolled up at the bottom. “It was cleaner than the rest of the house. The bathroom window was open. The actual bath itself was clear.”
The prosecution claims Becky’s murder was sexually motivated and that Matthews and Hoare had a shared interest in kidnapping and having sex with petite teenage girls.
A postmortem examination found Becky was suffocated, struck in the neck with a screwdriver and, after she died, stabbed 15 times in the abdomen, the jury heard.
The prosecution claims Becky died on 19 February and the couple spent the next three days cutting up her body, packaging it and cleaning their house.
The jury heard on Friday that Matthews, 28, and Hoare, 21, began a relationship when she was 14. Hoare’s mother, Lisa Donovan, described Matthews as very flirty, sexually orientated, domineering and when her daughter asked him for anything he would say she would have do him a “sexual favour” in return.
On 23 February, four days after Becky died, Hoare rang her mother and asked if she, Matthews and their child could visit. Hoare had not seen her mother for up to five years after an argument over a car.
Matthews and Hoare arrived at her mother’s home, five miles from the one they shared, stayed until late that night and repeatedly visited over the coming days as the search for Becky intensified.
Donovan, a mother of eight, said she wondered if they were on the run because they were in debt. But on one occasion she “jokingly” suggested they were responsible for Becky’s disappearance.
She told the jury: “I said: ‘I know why you are at my house all the time. You are running away from the police because you have kidnapped Becky.’” Hoare replied: “No.”
Matthews admits the manslaughter of Becky, dismembering her body and possessing two stun guns. He denies conspiracy to kidnap and murder. Hoare denies any involvement in the plot to kidnap, the murder or the aftermath.
The trial continues.
