A couple who helped the killers of the Bristol teenager Becky Watts by hiding her remains in their garden shed claimed they thought they were stashing drugs or stolen goods.
Sixteen-year-old Becky was killed by her step-brother, Nathan Matthews, and his partner, Shauna Hoare, in a sexually-motivated attack. Her body was dismembered with a circular saw, parcelled up and hidden in the shed of their neighbours, Karl Demetrius, 30, and Jaydene Parsons, 23.
On Thursday Demetrius and Parsons admitted assisting an offender but said they had not known they were hiding Becky’s remains.
They both apologised after Bristol crown court heard they exchanged messages about getting a share of £10,000 for helping Matthews and Hoare, which they planned to use on a house deposit.
Opening the case against the couple, Richard Posner, prosecuting, said bags found in their shed in Barton Court, Bristol, contained bags and containers packed with body parts, possessions or equipment used to dismember the teenager.
Posner said: “Mr Demetrius said that he believed he was hiding cannabis. Miss Parsons ... knew she was assisting an offender, either in an offence of handling stolen goods or drugs.”
He added: “Their actions contributed to the delay in finding Rebecca. Their actions certainly didn’t mean that she would have been found alive.”
A jury at Bristol crown court heard at the end of last year how Matthews, 28, and Hoare, 21, targeted Becky because they had a shared sexual interest in petite teenage girls and had discussed kidnapping schoolgirls for sex on social media.
On 19 February last year they went armed with tape, handcuffs and a stun gun to her family home, where Becky was suffocated and stabbed in the abdomen 15 times after her death.
The pair took Becky’s body back to their house and her body was dismembered in their bath. The parts were carefully packed in plastic and preservative and remained hidden until 3 March, when police found the remains.
Messages exchanged between Demetrius and Parsons suggest they expected a payday in exchange for their help. Parsons sent her boyfriend a message saying: “All done? Xxxx,” to which he replied: “Not yet babes.”
She responded: “Ah ok, you gonna hide it for him, we could do with the money. Lol. xxx.”
Parsons later sent another message referring to the fact that Matthews had promised to pay them a share of £10,000, the court heard. It said: “Cool, that’s a deposit on a house. Lol. xxx.”
Anna Vigars, for mother-of-two Parsons, said: “It was effectively a preparedness to turn a blind eye. Never in her wildest nightmares did she imagine or contemplate that it was the body or Rebecca Watts that was being hidden in her shed.” She said she had been forced to leave Bristol because of the case.
For Demetrius, Timothy Rose said his client “didn’t know what was actually going on”. He added: “I say on his behalf that he made an immediate but dreadful error of judgment, and a dreadful mistake.”
Demetrius and Parsons are due to be sentenced on Friday.
Mr Justice Dingemans, the judge at the trial of Becky’s killers, broke down in tears when he sentenced Matthews to at least 33 years in jail for murder and Hoare to 17 years for manslaughter in November.
Becky’s family have spoken of the horror not just of her killing but of the way her body was treated after her death.
Her mother, Tanya Watts, said: “Those people who were involved in Becky’s murder, dismemberment and concealment have left us with a lifetime of emptiness, continuing nightmares of her final moments and a grave to visit.”
Matthews and Hoare are both appealing against their convictions and sentences.
