Passenger in crash ‘was murdered girlfriend’

A MAN murdered his lover and strapped her body in the passenger seat of his van to dispose of it, but was caught when he crashed into a hedge, a jury was told.

John Doyle, 54, strangled lawyer Sian Rees at the converted mill home they shared on Dartmoor in Devon, the court heard, but as he drove her body away, lost control of his van.

A nurse stopped and examined Rees, 50, as Doyle pulled her body from the car. He asked the nurse: “Is she OK?” When the nurse informed him she was dead, he allegedly replied: “Oh.”

Exeter Crown Court was told that the couple met via a dating agency and moved in together at the mill. But their relationship soured.

Describing the crash prosecutor Paul Dunkels QC said: “In the front passenger seat was the dead body of his partner Sian Rees. She had not been injured in the car crash. Her body was cold and she had been dead 12 hours having been strangled to death by the defendant the previous evening.”

Doyle, of Merton Mill, Merton, denies murder. He says he did not intend to kill Miss Rees in the incident last June.

The trial continues.