Killer in the caravan: ‘He abused me as a boy’

AMAN accused of battering and strangling a loner to death in his caravan has told a jury that he lost control because of memories of childhood abuse.

Lewis Finch told Exeter Crown Court that he ‘lost it’ after spending a day at the caravan at an unofficial scrap yard near Newton Poppleford.

He battered victim Geoffrey Pearce over the head with a pickaxe handle and tightened a cable tie around his neck during a violent struggle in which the other man was armed with a frying pan.

Finch said he had taken cocaine the day before the attack and mixed vodka with the powerful painkiller Oramorph before falling asleep at the foot of Mr Pearce’s bed. He said he woke in the early hours to hear Mr Pearce masturbating and the experience brought back memories of his childhood abuse.

He shouted at him and an argument started which turned into a fight, during which he picked up a pickaxe handle and struck 47-year-old Mr Pearce on the head. He said the cable tie got tightened in the struggle but he could not remember doing it. When he realised Mr Pearce was dead, he sprayed deodorant aerosol on a sofa and the bed and set light to it.

Finch said he wanted to destroy the caravan because ‘it was a horrible place’ which reminded him of suffering abuse at Mr Pearce’s hands.

The prosecution told the jury he may have carried out the killing in an argument over drugs or money and he made a conscious decision to finish off his victim with a cable tie when he was already dying from head injuries he had inflicted.

They say he called his sister Ronnie Smith half way through the killing and she heard Mr Pearce screaming for help in the background. Finch allegedly told her ‘He’s not dead but he soon will be’.

Lewis Finch, 31, formerly of Montpelier Road, Exmouth, but now of Briseham Close, Brixham, denies murder but has admitted manslaughter. He told the jury he suffered a sudden loss of control and was in the grip of a mental illness when he carried out the killing.

Finch said his alcoholic mother often left him in the care of Pearce at the caravan when he was growing up and he suffered abuse from the age of 11 into adulthood. Pearce gave him drugs including cannabis and called himself Dad. The abuse carried on for so long that it became normal but he felt ashamed and did not tell anyone until after the killing, the court heard.

Finch said he went to the isolated site at Harpford about 24 hours before the killing, as he owed money for drugs and wanted to hide from his creditors. He hoped to get some money from Mr Pearce or find scrap metal to sell.

He said he took cocaine and Oramorph while there and fell asleep, waking to find himself on the end of Mr Pearce’s bed, and aware that he was touching himself under the bedding. He shouted at him, there was a fight, and he ended up picking up the pickaxe handle. He denied using a claw hammer, as has been suggested by the prosecution. He said: “I panicked. It wasn’t me” adding “It was a horrible place. When I think of that place, I think about everything that happened in there. I was not so much worried about getting rid of the evidence, it was more to erase the memory of what happened to me over the years.

“I wasn’t in control. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. I completely lost it. I admit I lost it. It was the memory of him doing things to me over so many years. It was one too many times.”

The trial continues.