Man accused of ‘Michael Myers type stabbing’ says ‘it could have been the other way round’
Liam Thomas is standing trial accused of murdering his cousin in row over a woman
AMAN accused of knifing his cousin to death in a “Michael Myers type stabbing” following a row over a woman has told a court: “It could have been the other way round.”
Matthew Horton died, aged 32, after being stabbed three times outside the block of flats where his former partner Chelsea Shaw lived.
Liam Thomas, who was is currently on trial charged with his murder, said he had spent the previous four days fishing on his dad’s canal boat in Burscough.
Giving evidence to the jury, the 26-year-old claimed under questioning from his counsel Nicholas Johnson KC that Mr Horton had shown up to the apartments “off his head on charlie” and “hit him across the side of the head with something” before he stabbed his relative “to get him off me”.
Thomas said he had known Ms Shaw - who he had taken up with following her split from the deceased for around three years. He was asked about a series of messages exchanged between him and his new girlfriend, who he said he had been seeing for seven weeks, in the 24 hours leading up to the incident.
During texts in the early hours, she told him that Mr Horton had “absolutely terrified” her, adding: “He’s threatening me. He’s hearing voices that are telling him s*** about me.
“It’s scary. He’s dangerous when he’s off his barnet him, no joke.”
Thomas then replied: “I know exactly what you mean. You don’t deserve that man.
“I’m here to rescue you. He’s a rat leaving you with not a penny.”
Thomas, of Woodend Avenue in Crosby, said this was a “reference to him taking £80 from her flat”, adding in his message: “He’s my cousin. He’ll end up dead if he carries on.”
He told the jury: “If he carries on sniffing lemo in one go, going round the bend. It’s a one way to destruction basically.”
Thomas was asked of another message to Ms Shaw, in which he told her: “He wont reach 40 if he doesn’t fix up. It’s his own fault.”
He said of this: “The way he was going. Getting off his head going on benders all the time, going round the bend.”
Mr Johnson cited a message in which Thomas stated “he’d best not try and turn up him when I’m there”. The defence silk asked him: “Was that a veiled threat?”
He replied: “It’s not a threat. No.” Thomas was also asked about a message in which he told Ms Shaw: “He’d better not come to yours. I’ll end up fighting with him haha haha.”
He told the court: “We’d had commotion in my flat five days prior to the incident. I didn’t want the incident to happen again, that’s what that means.”
Thomas said he had spent the previous four days fishing on his dad’s canal boat in Burscough before arriving back in Crosby at around 4.30pm on September 5 last year. He then met Ms Shaw at the Grapes pub in Thornton and had “one pint” of Stella Artois, while she “had a gin”.
They then visited a shop and “bought a quarter bottle of gin and three cans of lemonade” before returning to her flat in a taxi at roughly 7pm before having “a joint” with a neighbour, who left at around 8pm. The couple were then “chilling, listening to music and talking” before Mr Horton arrived and began “throwing stuff up at the window”.
Thomas said: “I thought it was bricks, but it turned out it was a bottle of water. Ten or 15 mins passed by.
“He was shouting stuff up. Basically, at that point, I’m thinking how am I going to deal with the situation?
“He climbed up - I don’t know how he climbed up. He got onto the balcony, banging on the back door of the flat.”
Asked why he went outside, Thomas said: “I thought he was going to get in anyway. It was going on for about 25 minutes, half an hour.
“I’ll just go down and try and speak to him. It’s my cousin.”
Thomas was wearing only a dressing gown and T-shirt with no underwear on at the time, with Mr Johnson asking: “Why didn’t you put clothes on? Why didn’t you put your pants on?”
He said that he “weren’t planning on going that far”. His counsel continued: “Were you actually intending to go beyond the main door, the communal door?”
Thomas responded: “No. No.” Mr Johnson put to him: “You’ve told us why you went down to see Matthew. Were you intending any violence at all?”
Thomas said: “Not at all. No.” Mr Johnson asked him whether he had “taken anything to use as a weapon?”. He replied: “No.”
Thomas recalled that he “went down first” with Ms Shaw “behind me”, then walked “maybe two or three feet” beyond the doorway. He then said: “I got hit across the side of the head with something.
“I’d opened the door. He’s like swung something at me. It must have been. All this happened really quickly.
“He whacked me across the side of the head with something. He sort of held me so my dressing gown was over my head.
“He’s punching me. She passed me the knife to me right.”
Mr Johnson asked him what he “did with the knife”. Thomas, who told the court that he was left-handed, said: “So with the knife in my hand, my right hand, I stabbed him in what I thought was the right side of his [left] thigh.” Thomas reported that they then “sort of split”, and said: “I could see then. The dressing gown was covering my eyes, my face.
“After I inflicted the injury on the leg, we broke free. Then he’s come swinging at me again. I took a step back. As he’s swung, as he’s come at me I’ve gone like that twice, quick.”
The defendant claimed he was “intending to just get him off me”. Mr Johnson asked: “What did you think was going to happen?”
Thomas said: “It could have been the other way round. He was gonna do something bad to me, he was coming for trouble.”
Mr Johnson continued: “Did you ever intend to cause him really serious harm?”
He replied: “I did not intend to cause him any harm at all.”
Thomas described Mr Horton as having been “in an aggressive manner”. Mr Johnson asked: “Did you get the impression from his behaviour he was under the influence of anything?”
He responded: “Yeah. It was clear to see that he was off his head on charlie yeah, coke.”
Thomas said Mr Horton then “stopped attacking me” and “sort of staggered” away. He reported he “had him in my arms” and was “trying to help him”, applying pressure to his wounds with his dressing gown.
Mr Johnson asked: “How did you feel at this stage?”
He replied: “I felt devastated, distraught, in a state of panic. It was all happening. Maybe it was 10 minutes. But it felt like really, really quick.”
Mr Johnson continued: “You said at the scene that Matthew had stabbed himself. Was that true?”
Thomas said: “That weren’t true. I could hear sirens. I was panicking.
“I’d just used the knife. The police were gonna come. They have guns. They could shoot me at this point. “Now I retract that. Yeah.” Merseyside Police were called at around 11.36pm, arriving roughly six minutes later and finding Thomas “on the ground holding up Mr Horton, who appeared by that stage lifeless”. Following his arrest, he was recorded as saying: “Whatever, I tried to help him.
Thomas also said he initially believed his cousin Mr Horton had been armed with “an axe or a bat” and that he had suffered a cut to his ear after being “hit across the head”. He was said to have “appeared under the influence of drugs or alcohol”, and was noted to have “no signs of injury, other than a slightly swollen left ear”.
Mr Horton was pronounced dead in an ambulance at 12.20am on September 6, 2023 upon arrival at Aintree Hospital. A post mortem investigation revealed he had suffered 38 injuries, including the three stab wounds.
Thomas answered no questions during a first interview with detectives later that day. But, during a second round of questioning on September 7, he stated Mr Horton “had beaten them both up in the past” and he was “shouting, throwing bricks and trying to get in”.
He claimed he was “scared to confront him, so Chelsea went with him to tell Matthew to go away”.
Thomas said he believed his relative had been “holding a metal bar or baseball bat”, although he said that the weapon was actually an “extendable
cosh” which he had used to hit him to the side of the head, while there had been “another guy with his face covered nearby”.
He alleged Ms Shaw had “passed him some sort of sharp item” which he “did not know she had until then”, and that he had “waved it about to try and fend Matthew off to defend himself, and never intended to hit him”.
Jurors also heard of a series of texts between the deceased and Ms Shaw, as well as between her and Thomas, in the days before the stabbing. In one message, late on September 3, Mr Horton “asked if she wanted sex at her place” then told her he had been to her flat and “cleaned it and fed her cat”.
He received no response however, and “tried to get her attention again” early the following day. But Ms Shaw “told him to f*** off”, and “suspected he had taken £80 from her when in the flat”.
That evening, Thomas said of Mr Horton in a message to her: “Yeah f*** him. Cheeky c***, little punter doing that to you.”
Ms Shaw replied he would “come and cause murder at all hours”, adding: “He’s dangerous when he’s off his barnet.”
Thomas then said: “I’m here to rescue you. He’s off his barnet sniffing bags of charlie.”
Mr Horton was said to have visited Ms Shaw’s apartment in the early hours of September 5, with Thomas “telling her to tell him to f***ing beat it”. He later “left without any incident”, although he messaged his ex saying “you deserve killing”.
After learning of this, Thomas told her: “Ignore him. He’s full of s***. He don’t know nothing him. He won’t do nothing.
“I feel like ringing for him now, but it’ll cause s*** for you. Wait until tomorrow.”
Thomas then visited Ms Shaw’s flat on the evening of September 5, telling her before in one text: “He’d best not come to yours. I’ll end up fighting with him.”
In the prosecution’s opening last week Nick Johnson KC told the court: “When a man called Matthew Horton went outside his ex-girlfriend’s flat late one night, angry that she had rejected him and moved on, her new boyfriend, this defendant, responded by going outside with a large kitchen knife and stabbing him three times, to death. The defendant said he would fight him if he came round.’
Mr Johnson said there had been a “number of eyewitnesses to events” including Another resident, John Carson.
Mr Carson told the police he could hear a man and a woman shouting “something like get the f*** away”. He then moved to his window and “saw a male half in and half out of the communal door, shouting to get away in an aggressive tone”.
This man, who is alleged to be Thomas, was said to have been holding a large kitchen knife, which “looked to be about 12 inches long”, in his right hand, near to his hip. Mr Carson then recalled seeing “both edging towards each other”.
He described Mr Horton as “seeming more cautious” and was said to have “tried to shove him away”, saying: “Lad. What the f*** are you doing?”
They then “grappled, seemingly for control over that knife”, with Mr Horton grabbing Thomas by the wrists. But the latter then “seemed to gain control and began swinging the knife wildly towards Mr Horton, several times in quick succession”.
Mr Horton “started to scream in terror” saying “what the f*** are you doing lad?”. Thomas was then seen “thrusting the knife rapidly, forcefully and intentionally into the area of Mr Horton’s torso” in an assault which Mr Carson said was “quick, and seemed to be targeted”.
David Myles too described seeing a man throwing a bottle of water at a window and another man emerging from a flat holding a knife. He recalled seeing the latter male bring this knife down upon Mr Horton in a “Michael Myers type stabbing motion”, a reference to the character from the Halloween film series.
He reportedly that the “knife went back and forth a few times” before the casualty was seen “stumbling away”. Thomas allegedly told him “you’ve stabbed yourself”, while Mr Horton said “I’m dead” as he fell to the floor.
Shortly before 8.15pm, Mr Horton messaged her to say “do you think I don’t know?”. Mr Johnson said that Thomas had then used Ms Shaw’s phone “to respond to goad him” in a reply which read: “You know who it is.
“I’ll see who I am. Come mate, come kid.”
Mr Horton was said to have then “offered to smash her window and knock your bird out and melt you”. Shortly before 11.30pm, he added: “Tell Liam when I see him all his teeth are gonna be missing.”
Mr Johnson told the court: “We have Matthew Horton, plainly threatening violence. We have the defendant responding in a similar way.
“The defendant said he would fight him, and quite possibly goaded him to come over to the flat. He was up for the fight, say the prosecution.
“He wasn’t acting in self defence, he was up for it. Nobody talked about using a dangerous weapon such as a knife.”
Mr Johnson added: “The prosecution say that, taking all of the evidence together, you will be able to reject any claim of self defence and conclude that the truth is the that the defendant stabbed Matthew Horton multiple times, intending him at the very least really serious harm. While he may now regret it, he cannot bring himself to face up to the truth of what he did.”
Thomas denies murder, manslaughter and possession of a bladed article in a public place.
The trial, before Judge Brian Cummings KC, continues.