I don’t think I’ll ever know why they killed Jimmy
EX PARTNER TELLS OF HARROWING TIME IN PROUT MURDER TRIAL
SHE listened to harrowing details of her former love’s sadistic killing in a desperate search for answers.
But now Mandy Carter fears she will never know why her ex, Jimmy Prout, was tortured and murdered.
The 45-year-old sat through hours of horrifying court room evidence hoping she would find out how the father of her children’s life took such a downward spiral that it ended with him being subjected to a campaign of grotesque violence.
However, Mandy is now coming to terms with the fact that she will never know why the man she devoted so many years to became a victim of such evil.
The mum, from Newcastle, said: “It will always bother me that I don’t know how he ended up like that or why they did it to him. But I don’t think we will ever get an answer to that. We did have our ups and downs but he didn’t deserve anything like this. No one deserves that.
“It didn’t come out why they did it. I feel like I’m still waiting for that. I thought we were going to find out at court, but they never really said.”
Vulnerable Jimmy was tortured and killed by twisted Zahid Zaman, who has been jailed for 33 years.
Newcastle Crown Court heard how Zaman subjected his 43-year-old victim to unbelievable cruelty, cutting out one of his testicles and forcing him to eat it, knocking his teeth out with a hammer and chisel and forcing him to have to sex with a dog.
The killer’s only apparent motive was the belief that Jimmy and others had been responsible for stealing tools from him.
After a series of attacks at St Stephen’s Way in Percy Main, North Shields, Jimmy died on February 9 2016.
But the frail broken man Jimmy became before his death could not have been more different from the joker Mandy knew in during their 14-year relationship.
Jimmy grew-up in Newcastle’s West End.
He lived a simple life, sometimes doing a little casual work and occasionally getting involved in low level crime, but he was a sociable character who enjoyed spending time with his friends. Mandy and Jimmy met in Newcastle city centre and were together from 1992 to 2006. “He was just a happy-go-lucky bloke,” she said. “He would always walk away from a fight. “He was as daft as a brush, a real joker and a laugh.” The couple’s relationship broke down after Mandy decided she had had enough of Jimmy getting in trouble with the police. By the mid 2000s, Jimmy was a regular user of homeless services in Newcastle, including soup kitchens. It is thought that this is where he could have met Zaman who, despite having a settled address, visited soup kitchens and food banks. Jimmy began to live as a tenant at his home where the ‘Dark Ages’ style abuse would unfold. Mandy last saw Jimmy in Newcastle just two months before he vanished. “Something must have gone really wrong in his life for him to end up in that situation,” she said. “I had seen him a few times in town and I had seen the change in him. It was if something had gone really wrong. I just couldn’t believe that was the same Jimmy.” Haunted by what her former partner had endured Mandy decided to join Jimmy’s friends and family in the public gallery at Newcastle Crown Court as his abusers stood trial. But the harrowing details of his death presented to the jury brought her no peace. She said: “We were together a long time, and I didn’t want to remember him like that. “He was a big part of my life.”