Prosecution: Killing ‘was planned to silence her’

Scott Walker carried out a ‘planned, premeditated murder’ when he killed Bernadette Walker, the prosecution has told a jury.

Scott Walker is accused of murdering Bernadette Walker on July 18 last year. In the days leading up to July 18 she had made allegations Scott Walker had been sexually abusing her. Scott Walker says Bernadette walked off from his car and disappeared. She has not been seen since July 18.

The jury during the month-long trial heard that on the morning of July 18, Scott Walker’s phone was switched off for an hour and a half after he picked Bernadette up. Cell site technology was able to say his phone had been travelling east when it was switched off.

Lisa Wilding QC, prosecuting, told the jury: “What happened, the prosecution say, is told to you by the evidence. By the evidence of the phone being switched off and by the cell site evidence. In combination, it can leave you in no doubt Scott Walker deliberately switched off his phone as he drove out to those fields out of Peterborough. It was a planned and premeditated killing.”

She said Scott Walker’s description of events was both ‘ludicrous’ and ‘non-existent.’ She said that Scott Walker had not given a description of where Bernadette had got out of the car until he gave evidence in court, and had also given no description of the journey he had made when he picked her up. She said he had created his story to fit the evidence.

Ms Wilding said: “The truth is, the prosecution can’t say where he killed Bernadette, though I wish we could. We can’t say how he killed Bernadette because despite extensive searches, the waterways and fields of the Fens have not handed Bernadette back. You can be sure she was killed in a way that left no forensic trace. This was not a killing that involved blood. We do suggest it was planned to silence her, done by a man you can have no doubt is forensically aware. He knew he had to lay an alternative trail.

“He knew what a phone could do, and by switching it off he could get away with it. But he didn’t switch it off quickly enough.” Scott Walker’s phone was switched off for an hour and a half before it was switched back on – and he immediately called

Sarah Walker, Bernadette’s mum, making a nine-minute phone call.

Ms Wilding told them to imagine they had received that call, that, on the defence case, was when Scott Walker had told Sarah Walker that their 17-year-old daughter had gone missing. Ms Wilding said that: ‘you’d have 50 questions’ to ask - –including where she had gone missing, what direction she had walked, what she had said, if she had her phone, if she had money.She said: “Your every waking moment would be obsessed with getting her back.” However, she said in the nineminute phone call meant ‘the unholy alliance’ between Scott and Sarah Walker began. Ms Wilding said that within half an hour of that phone call, Sarah had sent a message to one of Bernadette’s friends, pretending to be Bernadette, saying: ‘I ran away, I don’t want to be in trouble for lying.”

Ms Wilding also asked the jury to consider why Scott and Sarah Walker made so many trips to a lock-up garage between July 18 and July 20.

She said the garage ‘must have been’ where Bernadette’s mobile phone was stored.