Murder accused: ‘I lied to avoid any trouble’
False claims made over last sighting
ACCUSED murderer Shane Mays has admitted to jurors he deliberately lied to police searching for missing Louise Smith and said: ‘I didn’t want to get into trouble.’
Mays, 30, is continuing to give evidence at Winchester Crown Court where he denies murdering 16-year-old Louise Smith on May 8 in Havant Thicket.
Yesterday Mays agreed he lied to Detective Inspector Nicola Burton on May 13 by saying he said goodbye to Louise and left her walking up Billy Lawn Avenue on May 8 towards the skatepark nearby.
He said at that point he had no memory of repeatedly punching Louise in a clearing in Havant Thicket leaving her ‘moaning’ on the ground and being ‘still angry’. His memory only returned, he said, in June while on remand in prison in Bristol.
Prosecutor James NewtonPrice QC asked him about the period before he says his memory returned.
‘Did you think you were a completely innocent man?’ he said. Mays said: ‘Yes.’
Asked about telling Det Insp Burton about Billy Lawn Avenue, at first Mays said: ‘It wasn’t a lie, it was what I thought was best to say at the time.’
Asked what he meant, he said: ‘Because I had no idea of where Louise was.’
He walked Det Insp Burton and another detective to where he said he saw Louise on the day she disappeared, ‘acting out’ something that did not happen. This was to be ‘crafty’, the prosecutor said.
Mr Newton-Price said Mays was ‘deliberately trying to push the police in the wrong direction’. Mays denied this.
He told his wife Chazlynn Mays and his mother he walked Louise to Emsworth skatepark, the prosecutor said.
Yesterday he told jurors he thought he had, because his memory of the attack on Louise vanished when he left the clearing where her body was found.
The prosecutor pointed out that Mays said something different – about seeing her walk up Billy Lawn Avenue – to Det Insp Burton at his home in Ringwood House on May 13.
Mays said: ‘I said it because I didn’t want to get into trouble.’
Mr Newton-Price said: ‘Do we take it from that, that you lied to Det Insp Burton?’
‘Yes,’ Mays said. ‘ Because I didn’t want to get into trouble.’
Louise was living with Mays and his wife Chazlynn Mays, who is Louise’s aunt, in Somborne Drive, Leigh Park.
‘You were telling the police a pack of lies that you had invented to put (the police) off the trail of finding Louise’s body. Do you agree with that?’ Mays said: ‘No.’
Mays spent 105 minutes in a police interview giving police ‘completely inaccurate information’, the prosecutor said. This included saying he took her to Emsworth.
‘I had a memory of it, but no it’s not true,’ Mays told jurors today.
Mays denies murder. He has admitted manslaughter.
Louise’s body was found on May 21 following a major police search.
Mr Newton-Price said: ‘This girl, who you at one stage thought you and CJ would adopt, look after or care for, when the news come out on May 21 that she has been horribly murdered, were you shocked?’
‘Kind of,’ Mays said. He added: ‘I don’t cry.’
Mays, who said suffering a stroke at 18 affects his memory, finished giving evidence today.