Murder trial hears of slain teen’s final messages

hide the incriminating messages.

The defendant and his teenage associate then allegedly went back to the man’s home where he instructed the boy to clean the silver BMW.

Smith said police found blood, likely to be Amber-Rose’s, in the passenger side of the car.

More was found on the inside of a plastic bag in which the defendant allegedly put his clothes before burning them at his girlfriend’s home in

Balclutha. A pair of shoes at that address also had blood on them, the court heard.

Before dropping his teenage friend home, Skantha allegedly threatened to kill him and three family members if he spoke of what happened.

Soon after, however, the teenager went to police.

Amber-Rose’s mother, Lisa Ann Rush, who died of a suspected suicide last year, said in a statement read to the court that she saw “a glimpse of red” when she went into the teen’s bedroom in the morning.

She suspected a nosebleed before discovering the tragedy. “Amber wasn’t moving at all. I was screaming.”

Rush recalled a time she picked Amber-Rose up from Skantha’s home when she was unusually withdrawn.

One of the girl’s friends later explained the defendant had offered Amber-Rose money for sex.

It began at $50 and ended at $20,000, the friend said.

“When I found out . . . I told her I wanted to kill him,” Rush said.

Defence counsel Jonathan Eaton, QC, in his opening address, told the jury the evidence the Crown relied upon was either untruthful or unreliable.

It was accepted, Eaton said, that Amber was killed in her bed by “an intruder who knew how to get into the house in the dark of night, an intruder who knew where her bedroom was. That intruder was not Venod Skantha”.

He said the idea that the defendant committed murder to protect his career did not fit. “It makes no sense.”

The trial before Justice Gerald Nation and a jury continues.