Jury retires to consider verdict in man’s murder trial
A JURY has retired to consider its verdict on a builder who is accused of luring his wife’s secret lover to a remote farm and shooting him dead.
Andrew Jones is accused of murdering his long-time friend Michael O’leary before faking the dead man’s suicide, and then burning the body to destroy the evidence.
Prosecutors allege that 53-year-old Jones shot Mr O’leary as part of a carefully planned scheme to get rid of the love rival.
The defendant claims the .22 rifle accidentally went off while he and Mr O’leary grappled during an argument at Cyncoed Farm in Cwmffrwd, near Carmarthen, in January this year.
The father-of-three, who runs his own building company, maintains he arranged the meeting – and took the firearm to the evening rendezvous – to “scare” his friend of 25 years. He accepts he subsequently destroyed the man’s body on a pyre of wooden pallets.
Day 14 of his trial at Swansea Crown Court saw the judge, Mrs Justice Jefford, sum up the evidence heard in the case before sending the jurors out to consider their verdict.
She told the jury of four men and eight women: “As I have said repeatedly to you, what you make of the evidence is a matter for you.
“It is not in issue that Andrew Jones burnt Mike O’leary’s body to dispose of it. He says he did, and you may wonder why the detail of this matters.
“The prosecution say this is all part of a picture, not of a panicking Andrew Jones who has seen his friend die in a horrible accident, but of a man with a plan.
“Maybe not a perfect plan, but a plan to dispose of a body after killing and to a man who carried out that killing calmly while keeping up appearances with his family and his friends and with the police.
“The defence say it shows nothing of the sort but the fact the forensic or the scientific evidence fits with Mr Jones’ account of what he did – and whether or not it does is a matter for you – is another example of him telling the truth and therefore assists you to assess his credibility and the truthfulness of
what he has been telling you.”
Following the death of Mr O’leary at Cyncoed Farm it is accepted by both prosecution and defence that Jones put on the dead man’s shoes and drove his Nissan pickup to a car park in Capel Dewi.
There, he used Mr O’leary’s phone to send messages to his family saying he was “sorry” before tossing the mobile and car keys into the River Towy to make it look like he had driven to the river to take his own life.
Jones then rode back to Cyncoed Farm on a bicycle, and drove Mr O’leary’s plastic-wrapped body home in the boot of his wife Rhiannon’s car. He then destroyed the body on a bonfire of wooden pallets.
The prosecution say the events after the fatal shooting were all part of Jones’ “calm and considered plan” to “extinguish the threat to his marriage” posed by Mr O’leary. The defence maintain they were just the situation “spiralling out of control” after the farmyard death.
Jones, of Bronwydd Road, Carmarthen, denies murder.
The jury will continue its deliberations today.