Suspect for double murder ‘told boss he was going to jail’
A BuIlDEr told his boss ‘I’m going away for 25 to life’ before he was arrested for killing two women, a court heard yesterday.
Mark Brown, who described himself as a ‘psychopath with a conscience’, allegedly made the panicked call after detectives started to investigate the disappearance of a single mother of two.
Alexandra Morgan thought she would be spending the weekend at a hotel in Brighton after the 41-year-old allegedly promised her more than £100,000 for a ‘risk-free’ job. Instead Brown killed her at a farm where six months earlier he had killed 33-year-old leah Ware, Hove Crown Court heard.
Police believe the father of one burnt both bodies – but that of Miss Ware, a single mother of three, has never been found.
Jurors were told Miss Morgan, 34, left her home on November 14 last year to do the mystery job at the Travelodge hotel where Brown was a security guard. He had instructed her to keep it secret so she told her family she was away with a friend.
But, ‘perhaps as she feared to meet her death’, she left a box in her younger son’s bedroom with clues, it was alleged.
Duncan Atkinson KC, prosecuting, said: ‘She clearly realised that it may not be above board, because she left that trail of clues for her sons, and the police, to find.’
The clues led police to a phone with her messages from Brown and a note about the farm and where he worked.
Days after her disappearance, officers began to make inquiries and traced her vehicle to the property rented by Brown near Hastings in East Sussex.
As the net began to close in, Brown is said to have made incriminating phone calls to his boss Alan Downs saying: ‘The police have my phone and I am going to be arrested.’
When he was asked what he was going to be arrested for,
‘The police have my phone’
Brown allegedly replied: ‘Murder ... double ... I’m going away for 25 to life.’
The remains of Miss Morgan, who lived in Sissinghurst, Kent, were found in an oil drum at a building site. Both she and Miss Ware, from Hastings, were escorts. Brown denies murdering the women but admits to disposing of Miss Morgan’s body after ‘an accident’. The trial continues.