Safe holding up to £250k taken after barbaric killing
Suspect denies beating pensioner to death
An elderly businessman was beaten to death at his home before burglars fled with a safe containing up to £250,000, a court heard this week.
The raid was carried out by the same gang that launched a violent attack at the home of a champion clay-pigeon marksman, it was alleged.
Roy Blackman, 73, was punched, kicked and stamped on by burglars, who eventually fled with the safe from Heartsay Bungalow, Headcorn Road, Biddenden.
Mark Love, 38, denies murdering the garage owner and bird breeder in March and aggravated burglary at the home of George and Kate Digweed in Northiam, East Sussex, a month before.
Prosecutor Simon Taylor alleged another man, William Smith – who was shot dead by police – was also involved.
“It may well have been, had he been alive, William Smith would have been in the dock alongside Mr Love,” he told the jury at Maidstone Crown Court.
Mr Blackman’s home was “comprehensively ransacked” as the raiders searched for valuables.
The safe stolen would have contained between £100,000 and £250,000 in cash, property deeds, jewellery belonging to the victim’s late wife and an air rifle.
“Both Mr Love and Mr Smith left deposits of their DNA at the scene of the crime,” said Mr Taylor. “It was in circumstances which were otherwise inexplicable.”
DNA from Love, of Frittenden Road, Staplehurst, was found on a glove and debris under a fish tank and on a tap in the bathroom.
Smith’s DNA was on a bottle of cleaning fluid in the lounge.
The burglars had run a bath to wash items in an attempt to destroy scientific evidence.
After Love’s arrest the interior of an Astra van associated with him at a lock-up at Porkpie Farm in Frittenden was found sodden with dirty water as if it had been submerged in a lake.
The prosecutor said Love and Smith were seen together at Love’s lock-up at Porkpie Farm in the early evening of March 20.
At about the same time, Nicola Blackman saw her father alive for the last time.
She worked for him at a garage next to his home, and discovered his naked and beaten body when she went to check on him the following morning.
He had black eyes, a broken nose, a fractured left cheekbone and a subarachnoid haemorrhage consistent with a brain injury.
He had injuries to his hands and arms from trying to protect himself, as well as fractured ribs and abdominal bruising.
Mr Taylor said Mr Blackman, who lived alone with Jack Russell Bonzo, was a quiet and private person who did not socialise outside his family. He was “old school” and dealt only in cash.
The jury of seven men and five women were being taken to both crime scenes on Wednesday.
The trial continues.