A fugitive who is accused of murdering a grandmother while she was out walking her dog took her phone to a town centre three days later and dumped it there to “put the police off the trail”, a court heard.
Prosecutor Christopher Paxton KC told jurors at Ipswich Crown Court that Roy Barclay, 56, had been “unlawfully at large” for two years at the time he was said to have killed Anita Rose.
The mother-of-six, aged 57, was found injured by a cyclist near a sewage works in Brantham, Suffolk on July 24 last year.
She died four days later in hospital of traumatic head injuries.
Barclay, of no fixed address, denies her murder.
Mr Paxton, continuing to open the prosecution case on Friday, said Barclay had looked at news articles about the incident in the days after the attack.
He said that in one article viewed by Barclay, senior police officer Mike Brown appealed for information about Ms Rose’s iPhone which Mr Brown said could hold “key information”.
The prosecutor said that “was a signal to cunning Roy Barclay that he needed to get rid of that phone”.
“Mike Brown was right and that explains what was to follow the very next day in Ipswich town centre on July 27,” Mr Paxton said.
“Roy Barclay dumps Anita’s iPhone after Mr Brown has told the public in an article Mr Barclay has viewed about the significance of that phone.”
He said that the “dropping of Anita’s phone in Ipswich” was “to put the police off the trail”.
The barrister said that Barclay was captured on CCTV footage in Upper Orwell Street in Ipswich on July 27 with a “carrier bag in his left hand” which prosecutors say contained Ms Rose’s phone.
He said that Barclay entered a seating area with the bag and is later seen to emerge from the seating area without the bag.
He said a couple – Mr Ichim and Ms Baiculescu – were captured on CCTV minutes later entering then emerging from the seating area and “there’s an exchange of an item” between them, which Mr Paxton said was Ms Rose’s phone.
“Within a minute or so when that phone is switched on, that’s Anita’s phone, it alerts the police,” Mr Paxton said.
He said that “numerous police officers flooded the area and found the unsuspecting Mr Ichim and Ms Baiculescu” in a mobile phone and vape shop.
The barrister said “they had paid for a factory reset of the phone” but police arrived before this was done.
He said Mr Ichim was arrested and later released, adding: “Many people at times were treated as suspects but were later released without charge.”
He said “nobody other than Anita knew the password” to the phone, and police have not been able to get into it.
The barrister said Barclay “played at times a cat and mouse game with police, watching their moves”.
He added that after he was arrested, Barclay denied any wrongdoing in a prepared statement and said: “I would sometimes sit on the benches on Upper Orwell Street. There is often litter on the seats and in that area.”
Mr Paxton said: “He knew this was a popular area, that’s why he chose it, a busy seating area where he would be able to drop something.”
The prosecutor said Barclay showed an “arrogance in keeping the items he did as trophies, believing perhaps that he could get away with murder”.
He had earlier told the trial that Ms Rose’s pink jacket, phone case and Samsung earbuds were found at camps Barclay had used.
Mr Paxton said Barclay had also searched online for four prisons “no doubt wondering if caught which prison he would end up in”, and that this was done on July 25, the day after Ms Rose was attacked.
He said it took a “piece of luck for police to have contact with” Barclay, when Detective Constable Barry Simpson “saw a male walking quickly along the road” on October 15.
The officer, who was in an unmarked car and working on the murder investigation, “thought the male looked similar to an image he had seen in the murder inquiry” and stopped to speak with him.
Mr Paxton said the man was Barclay, but that he “lied” to Det Con Simpson and gave his name as John Lesley, providing a false home address and saying he worked as a gardener.
The prosecutor said the officer took photos of Barclay “surreptitiously” and he was allowed on his way, but a “manhunt” started the following day when officers determined that the man was not John Lesley.
Barclay was tracked down by police and arrested at Ipswich Library on October 21, said Mr Paxton, adding that Barclay had “changed his appearance” – with a shaved head and the “beard’s gone”.
The barrister earlier told jurors that Barclay had “lived off-grid” and slept in “various makeshift camps”.
“He had been on the run trying to avoid the police and authorities to try and avoid being recalled back to prison,” Mr Paxton said.
He said Ms Rose was subjected to “numerous kicks, stamps and blows being delivered to her face, head and body” in a “vicious and brutal attack”.
The trial continues.
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