Law student charged for inciting ex-lover with sex photo ‘taunt’
A FORMER law student alleged to have been at the centre of a love triangle which ended in murder has been charged with incitement.
Sarah Bramley, 29, is alleged to have sent an explicit photograph of herself performing a sex act on another man to her former boyfriend.
She told David Saunders, 33, where they were and invited him to come over and attack the man in the image, a court heard.
It is claimed the picture “tipped David Saunders over the edge”.
He lay in wait for his victim and stabbed Michael Lawson, 34, once through the heart in Darlington last July.
Saunders, 33, was jailed for life in December at Teesside Crown Court with a minimum term of 22-and-a-half years after he admitted murdering the father of one.
Bramley is now facing trial on an incitement-related charge after a judge ruled the explicit photo she sent to Saunders had “a very important bearing” on his state of mind.
She appeared before Newton Aycliffe Magistrates’ Court in Co Durham last week.
The court heard that between June 29 and July 2 last year, she sent Saunders a photograph of herself with another male, advised him of her whereabouts and invited him to come over and assault him.
The charge states that the act of sending the photograph “was capable of encouraging or assisting the commission of one or more of offences of murder” and that Bramley did so, “believing that one or more of those offences would be committed”.
She will appear before Teesside Crown Court next month.
Bramley, from Darlington, is understood to have been arrested by Co Durham police on her return to the UK from Australia last month.
She is thought to have been living there since the knife killing in July.