101-year-old face to face with pair ‘who killed her friends’
‘Midsomer’ witness is oldest ever
A 101-YEAR-OLD woman became the oldest witness in a British murder trial yesterday as she confronted the men accused of plotting to kill her two friends.
Former Stowe School secretary Liz Zettl was the third intended target of Ben Field, 28, and 32-year-old Martyn Smith, jurors heard.
Field is accused of murdering the prestigious school’s former head of English, Peter Farquhar, 69, and conspiring to kill his neighbour Ann Moore-Martin, 83, in the village of Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire.
Both pensioners were allegedly manipulated into changing their wills in the defendants’ favour after a concerted cammorning, paign of mental torture and poisoning. In a case dubbed the Midsomer Murders trial for its similarities to the settings of the ITV show, prosecutors say Mr Farquhar’s food was laced with a powerful hallucinogen before he was finally suffocated.
Smith, an amateur magician, was lodging with Mrs Zettl at her home in the historic centre of Buckingham when the police probe began, Oxford Crown Court was told. Both Smith and Field, a deputy church warden, are accused of possessing a copy of her will with the intention of carrying out yet another alleged fraud on an elderly victim. Prosecutor Oliver Saxby QC has said they acquired it ‘to see what she was worth’. Yesterday, Mrs Zettl, who worked at Stowe School before the Second World War and knew both alleged victims, arrived at court in a wheelchair.
Grasping her walking stick, she stood when Mr Justice Sweeney entered the courtroom and when she took her oath.
Jurors were played her interviews with police, in which she said Smith had given her ‘absolutely no trouble’ and paid his £80 monthly rent on time. ‘He studies noon and night and I had absolutely no fault to find with him, and that – apart from the rumours I heard – is all I know actually,’ she told officers.
She recalled going for curries with her ‘gentle’ lodger, but later said she was puzzled why a copy of her front door key had been found in Field’s possession. She said she had been drafting a new version of her will, but had not sought the pair’s help. Asked if she had planned to include Field and Smith in the document, she replied: ‘Good heavens no.’
Mrs Zettl told Tim Moloney QC, for Smith, she had no memory of being asked to type up changes to her will. ‘Sorry it wasn’t very helpful but my memory isn’t what is used to be,’ she added.
The judge told her: ‘If we are all as bright as you are at your age, we would have great cause to be grateful.’ Field is said to have started sexual relationships with both Mr Farquhar and Mrs MooreMartin as part of the plots.
The court heard from her niece, Anne-Marie Blake, 39, who said her aunt was ‘tortured’ by betrayal when she realised her love affair with Field had been a sham. She died of a stroke two months later. Miss Blake told the court she did not think her aunt had died of natural causes.
Field is said to have left messages purporting to be from God on mirrors in the pensioner’s house, persuading the devout Catholic to write him into her will.
Field, of Olney, Buckinghamshire, inherited £20,000 from Mr Farquhar. Smith, of Redruth, Cornwall, got £10,000. The pair deny murder and conspiracy to murder. Field also denies an alternative charge of attempted murder. The trial continues.