Andrew hid.. I counted. Andrew killed Jellica while we were playing hide-and-seek

A BRAVE little girl rescued from Andrew Innes’s house provided key evidence to help police nail the monstrous double killer.

Detectives found the seven-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, in the software engineer’s house watching cartoons.

He claimed the girl was his daughter when officers came to his home looking for Bennylyn and Jellica.

But detectives uncovered the fact the seven-year-old was unrelated to him and had spent the previous two weeks in Innes’s house being subjected to horrific sexual assaults and a rape.

Innes told jurors if the police had turned up to his house 24 hours later, officers could have found her murdered body.

The child saw Bennylyn and Jellica being killed. In the shocking few weeks after police dug Bennylyn and Jellica’s remains from under Innes’s kitchen floor, officers spoke to the child.

A patient police employee worked with the girl and pieced together the events which led to Bennylyn’s death.

And at the High Court in Edinburgh, jurors sat down to watch the 90-minute video of the child being interviewed.

Before they were brought in to hear the evidence, judge Lord Beckett asked prosecutor Alex Prentice how long the video was to take.

He described an earlier video of the child as being “one of the most harrowing evidence” he had heard in his entire legal career.

Prentice expressed concern about the impact it could have on the wellbeing of the jury who were sitting in a room elsewhere in the court, unaware of the recording’s shocking contents. In the recording, made in May 2021, the little girl could be seen smiling and laughing and using felt tip pens to draw pictures.

At one point, during a break in the interview, the little girl could be seen hiding behind a door and jumping out in front of the interviewer causing the woman to laugh.

The jury heard the girl say: “Andrew pretended that Jellica was hiding because they were playing hide-and-seek but Andrew killed Jellica.

“Andrew hid. I counted. Andrew killed Jellica when we were playing hide-andseek.”

When asked where this happened in Innes’s house, she replied: “Andrew shut the door so it must have been in the bathroom where Andrew tied us all up.”

The little girl said that she also saw Innes “kill” Bennylyn with a hammer.

She said: “I tried to call the police. I couldn’t speak.”

Speaking about the deaths of Bennylyn and Jellica, the little girl said: “I tried to save them but I couldn’t because I didn’t know what was happening.”

She also said Innes stopped her from leaving his property.

The child added: “Andrew put a rope on the door and attached it to the other door and I couldn’t open it.

“I told him, ‘I want to go with you’, because that was my chance to get out.”

The interviewer also gave the little girl two small pieces of paper shaped like bodies. She was told by the interviewer that one of the bodies was “Andrew”.

The little girl described Innes forcing her into carrying out sexual acts.

Later, the girl also spoke of Bennylyn and Jellica. She said: “I pray for them.”

I tried to call the police but i couldn’t speak SEVEN-YEAR-OLD VICTIM OF INNES