I didn’t mean to kill her, tragic Becky’s stepbrother sobs in dock
THE stepbrother of Becky Watts broke down in court yesterday as he claimed he was only trying to knock her out when he killed her.
Sobbing uncontrollably, Nathan Matthews described how the 16-yearold stopped breathing after he squeezed his hands around her neck to make her pass out using a playground trick he had done with friends at school.
He told jurors he then dismembered Becky’s body with a circular saw to protect the family from the truth.
Matthews, 28, began crying within three minutes of entering the witness box at Bristol Crown Court and wept repeatedly during his evidence as he insisted he killed Becky accidentally when he tried to kidnap her to ‘teach her a lesson’. The former pizza delivery driver is accused of murdering 5ft 1in Becky with his girlfriend Shauna Hoare, 21, in a sex-driven kidnap plot driven by a shared interest in teenage girls.
He admits manslaughter but
‘I couldn’t hear any breathing’
denies murder. Hoare denies all charges against her including murder and conspiracy to kidnap. Matthews told jurors Hoare was outside smoking a cigarette when he took the ‘opportunity’ to carry out his plan to kidnap 9st Becky in her bedroom.
Slumped in the witness box, he said he had gone to his stepsister’s Bristol home armed with a stun gun, handcuffs, tape, a white face mask and a suitcase.
The former TA soldier said he put on a deep voice so Becky would not recognise him and told her she would be fine if she did what she was told.
He handcuffed her and put tape over her mouth and eyes, but she started to struggle as he tried to bundle her into a suitcase.
After punching Becky in the mouth, Matthews said he tried to make her pass out using his hands to restrict the blood flow to her head. He told the court: ‘After that she stopped... stopped kicking.’ As Matthews described the moment he killed Becky, her aunt and uncle left the court in tears and his mother Anjie wailed from within the courtroom. He said: ‘I remember I couldn’t hear any breathing, that’s when ‘‘something’s not right’’ and I checked her for a pulse. There wasn’t a pulse there.’
Matthews broke down in tears and the judge called for a break.
The killer later told jurors how he dismembered his stepsister with a circular saw in his bathtub at home in Bristol after attempting to dissolve her body using drain cleaner.
When asked about the 15 stab wounds found on Becky’s abdomen he said he inflicted them to let out body fluids, inspired by a film or an episode of the television forensics show CSI.
Questioned about his state of mind when he was cutting up his stepsister’s body, he said: ‘I just did it. I tried not to look. It was surreal. I was doing what I had to do to protect everybody else finding out what had happened, that she was gone.’
Matthews was the best man when his mother married Becky’s father Darren Galsworthy, the court heard. He told jurors he devised his plan to scare Becky into treating his mother better. The court heard that a laptop found in the bedroom of Matthews and Hoare contained a video entitled ‘Virgin teen gets raped in her own house’. Prosecutor Richard Posner said it showed the ‘rapist’ with his hand over the girl’s face for a minute.
The laptop had 236 images and 21 movies showing an interest in teenagers, the court heard. Some 38 bookmarks on phones used by Hoare and Matthews related to porn or escort services, the jury was told. The trial continues.