Escort killed by millionaire lover had tryst on his farm machinery
A BURLESQUE dancer killed by a millionaire businessman suffering from a mid-life crisis was filmed romping on farm machinery with another call girl, a court heard yesterday.
Peter Morgan, 54, strangled Georgina Symonds, 25, after tapping her phone and learning of her plan to ‘fleece him’ of his fortune and run away with other men.
The mother-of-one was said to be blackmailing Morgan, a married father of two daughters worth £20million, with a cache of explicit images and films showing sex sessions at his family’s farmhouse.
Yesterday Newport Crown Court heard the dossier – said to be ‘enough to ruin’ Morgan – included a video of Miss Symonds and another escort engaging in ‘sexual activity’ on farm machinery. There was also a photo of a sex worker called Sam posing next to an Army tank Morgan bought after realising he was going through a mid-life crisis.
Miss Symonds was also pictured wearing his wife Helen’s dressing gown as she stroked the family cat. Another image showed her posing in her underwear with Morgan’s dog.
There was a photo of Morgan taking part in a three-way sex session with Miss Symonds and a call girl named Lauren, which took place in his marital bed, and the dossier also featured a series of selfies of Miss Symonds and Morgan in bed, and films of her in ‘sexually explicit’ poses.
Taking the stand in the second week of his murder trial, Morgan told how at the age of 48 ‘it just hit me that nothing last for ever’. He said the ‘midlife crisis’ in 2011 led him to buy an American fire engine and the tank, which he parked in the grounds of his farm.
He also told friends he would like to ‘die during a threesome with two other women’, the court heard earlier this week.
The court also heard he collected machinery including excavators, cranes, and motorbikes – and displayed his collection of guns including AK47s and sawn-off shotguns on the walls of his living room.
In October 2011, during a visit to a lap dancing club, a friend showed Morgan how to access the escorting website AdultWork.com on his iPhone. After finding there were ‘around 500 or 600 escorts’ across South Wales, he booked one and visited her the following day, paying £130 for an hour of sex at her flat on Cardiff Bay.
Morgan said: ‘I would do it once a month. I liked it because it was very unemotional and you didn’t get attached.
‘I remember the first one, I shook her hand as I left. It was just like that – unemotional.’
Morgan told the jury he saw a different escort every time. In May 2012, he phoned Miss Symonds for the first time and arranged to meet her the following day. He said: ‘I don’t know what it was but I just seemed to get on with her. It was the first time I had been back to see one. I had no intention of seeing one more than once.’
By 2013, he was seeing Miss Symonds once a week, along with other escorts. ‘I had a three-way with George and another prostitute,’ he told the court. ‘The first time was in 2012, it was the middle of November. It was at the flat in Newport. The flat belonged to the other girl, Robyn.’
He eventually started paying Miss Symonds between £7,000 and £10,000 a month to be his exclusive escort. When she died in January last year she had almost £120,000 in her account, the court heard.
Jurors heard Morgan’s marriage ended in March 2015 after his wife insisted he tell his parents the truth about his relationship with Miss Symonds.
Morgan, who denies murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility, strangled Miss Symonds with a twine ligature in the bungalow where she lived next to his 13th-century castle, after hearing that she planned to leave him.
He confessed to police that he killed her when she was reported missing.
The trial continues.
‘I just seemed to get on with her’