A publican accused of ordering his wealthy wife’s
A publican accused of ordering his wealthy wife’s murder bragged: ”It will be on the front page of the newspapers,” jurors heard today.
(weds)
Barmaid Angela Collins said pub boss James Garside, 54, confided he was going to ‘get rid’ of his wife Marilyn.
He revealed he would get someone else to kill the 54-year-old mum-of-two and pocket the pnds stlg 250,000 from the sale of their country pub in Suffolk, she said.
Mother-of-one Miss Collins told jurors at the Old Bailey she met the couple while working at the Bulls Head pub, in North Lopham, in Norfolk in 1999.
In April 2000 she accepted a job at the couple’s Cross Keys pub, in Redgrave, bought with Mrs Garside’s pnds stlg 100,000 redundancy money.
During the summer the following year Garside told Miss Collins they were planning to sell the pub, she told the court.
‘He also told me that he was going to get rid of Lynn [Marilyn],’ Miss Collins told the jury.
‘I asked him if he was going to get a divorce.
He said: ”No, I’m going to kill her”.
‘He said: ”If I divorce her I will only get pnds stlg 120,000 from the sale of the pub.
If she’s dead I get it all – pnds stlg 250,000”.
‘He told me that he would bide his time and the first anyone would know would be when it is on the front page of the local newspaper.
‘He said he would keep busy so he could always be seen.
He would get someone else to do it so no one could link him with it.
‘
Garside allegedly hired mechanic Robert Bates, 50, to stab his wife to death on the doorstep of her mother’s Essex home, the court has heard.
He had a string of lovers and told one he planned to have his wife executed and use her money to set up a jet ski business with her in Greece, jurors were told.
Mrs Garside was knifed to death on the doorstep of her elderly mother’s home in Rose Lane, Chadwell Heath, Essex after she answered a knock at the door on October 2, 2001.
She was a divorcee who had been married to Garside for four years.
Her wealth came from the cottage she owned and the pub bought from a pnds stlg 100,000 redundancy settlement in 1996.
Garside, of Ullswater Avenue, South Wootton, and Bates, of Castle Acre Road, Great Massingham, both King’s Lynn, Norfolk, both deny murder.
The trial continues.
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