The shared smiles before the murder
SMILING for the camera, murdered Darren Bonner poses for a chilling selfie with the killer he thought was his friend.
The tragic victim looks healthy, relaxed and happy while socialising with Richard Spottiswood and his partner Lucy Burn.
But soon after this snap was taken Mr Bonner was dumped dying in a recently dug shallow grave by Spottiswood, who had left him seriously brain damaged by choking him in a headlock.
Spottiswood has now been given a life sentence and told he must serve a minimum of 22 years after being convicted of murder after a trial, and his accomplice Lucy Burn, who admitted assisting an offender, was jailed for 30 months.
And now we can reveal the eerie image that shows how Mr Bonner was killed by someone he believed to be a friend.
Burn presses her cheek against Mr Bonner’s affectionately as she takes the selfie picture. Spottiswood, meanwhile, leans in on the other side of his victim.
The picture was taken while all three were socialising before relations soured between the 34-year-old killer and his victim.
Newcastle Crown Court heard how Spottiswood, of Canterbury Way in Jarrow, killed Darren during a weekend at a caravan park, in Cresswell, Northumberland, believing he had betrayed him to a rival drug dealer.
The jury was told that Spottiswood ran a number of cannabis farms in South Tyneside and Mr Bonner worked for him and lived in a van at his garage.
And Det Chief Insp Andy Fairlamb, who led the investigation for Northumbria Police, said Mr Bonner appeared to be very much under Spottiswood’s control.
“Darren was a young man who had very little. He had few possessions. He lived in a van in someone’s garage yard. He didn’t have many clothes. He had no money. He liked to drink and take drugs,” said Det Chief Insp Fairlamb. “He was very much somebody who did as Spottiswood requested.”
Mr Bonner was found on the brink of death in a previously dug hole behind a dry stone wall in Cresswell, after a walker heard noises coming from behind a wall.
He was taken to hospital, where he died 16 days later.
Det Chief Insp Fairlamb believes it would have been very easy for the killer to overpower his young victim.
“If you compare Darren with Spottiswood, Spottiswood was a lot bigger and stronger, and Darren was slimmer. It would have been very easy for Spottiswood to control Darren,” he said.