The jury in the trial of former trainee jockey Charles Jessp, accused of murdering his former girlfriend Clare Nash in Newmarket, has retired to consider its verdict.
A jury is expected to retire today to consider its verdict in the trial of a 29-year-old man accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend.
Ipswich Crown Court.
Asked by his barrister Kier Monteith QC why 16 days later he had stabbed and strangled Miss Nash, Jessop replied: “Because of that medication.”
Jessop claimed that Miss Nash had threatened to shoot him on an earlier occasion, with a gun he alleged she was holding for drug dealers, and that while they were in the toilet, he feared that if he didn’t kill her, she would kill him.
On Tuesday, Mr Cotter delivered his closing speech on behalf of the prosecution.
He told jurors that evidence given on the stand about Clare s lifestyle had been quite literally a character assassination by Jessop, who he accused of spitting on her grave .
Jane Hunt
Clare Nash died in her flat in Brickfields, Newmarket
- Credit: Archant
A former trainee jockey who claims he stabbed and strangled his former girlfriend because he feared she would shoot him if he didn’t kill her has denied lying about her having a gun.
Giving evidence during his trial at Ipswich Crown Court, Charles Jessop denied that he had invented previously seeing Clare Nash with a gun in her house to explain his actions.
Jessop told the court that two months before he allegedly murdered 33-year-old Miss Nash in a toilet at her flat in Brickfields, Newmarket she had shown him a black handgun wrapped in plastic that had been hidden in a wardrobe.
He described how his disappointment turned to anger and he had started sending her abusive messages.
He had snorted Citalopram and his anger had continued mounting, resulting in him smashing his phone on a pub table and allegedly telling a friend that he would slit Miss Nash’s throat if he saw her in the pub again.
On January 16 he had cycled to Miss Nash’s flat after snorting two Citalopram tablets and described feeling as though he was playing a computer game.
When Miss Nash arrived home with a friend Jessop had walked in through the unlocked front door and accused her of avoiding him.