Accused child killer ‘throttled girlfriend during sex’
Accused killer James Watson regularly put his hands around the neck of a girlfriend when they had sex, the Old Bailey heard.
Watson, 40, is accused of strangling six-year-old Rikki Neave in Peterborough in November 1994, before stripping and posing his body in a ‘star shape’.
Watson was 13 at the time of the murder and jurors have heard he allegedly sexually assaulted a five-year-old boy 18 months before the killing.
A woman, who cannot be named, told jurors on Friday (11) that Watson would put his hands around her neck every time they had sex.
She said: ‘When James got excited towards the end of the sexual part, he would put his hands around her neck during sex.
‘When James got excited towards the end of the sexual part, he would have his hands on my neck.’
She said when he climaxed ‘he would hold, he would leave marks on my throat.’
Continuing her evidence today (mon) she denied she was lying about Watson’s actions.
Junior defence counsel Sally Hobson asked: ‘I’m going to suggest that you did have sexual intercourse with him…but that was entirely consensual wasn’t it?’
‘The sex between myself and James was consensual, yes,’ the witness replied.
Ms Hobson went on: ‘And at no point did he ever put his hands on your neck or around your neck.’
‘Yes he did,’ she said.
The barrister continued: ‘And had he done so you would have made it clear to him that you didn’t like that.’
The woman replied: ‘I told him I did not like that and did not speak to him for a few days after.
‘It still would not change the fact that James put his hands around my throat when we had sex and he got excited.’
Ms Hobson read out letters that the witness had written to Watson, detailing their time together.
One of them recorded how they took drugs – ‘speed, heroin, valium’.
The witness said that taking those substance did not affect her memories of sex with Watson.
‘He did put his hands around my neck.
‘That’s not going to change.
‘It doesn’t matter how many questions you ask me.
‘James put, when he got excited, his hands around my neck.
‘That will not change regardless.’
When asked why her many letters to Watson made no mention of it, she said that she was ‘trying to be amicable’.
Ms Hobson said: ‘Ms Lawson you have portrayed yourself as a victim at the hands of James Watson in relation to putting his hands on your throat during sex.’
The woman replied: ‘He put his hands on my neck while we were having sex.
‘I didn’t try to be a victim I was telling you the truth.
‘That is not going to change.
‘There was good sides to James, there was negative sides to James.’
Jurors have heard that the two engaged in sexual activity ‘four or five times’ in woodland.
The witness also recalled one occasion, in the same woods, when Watson threw a stone at a bird and killed it.
‘One of those little brown ones like starling birds,’ she said. ‘He laid it out and spread its wings and plucked feathers.’
Watson laid the starling on ‘its back’ and ‘put it in his pocket’ when he left the wood, it was said.
The witness’ statement, made to police in 2016, recorded how she thought Watson ‘was trying to strangle’ her.
She told Ms Hobson that Watson’s actions had a ‘profound impact on her’.
‘It still does today.
‘I do not like anyone touching my neck.’
Asked why she continued to have sex with Watson if he consistently became violent, the witness replied: ‘Because his behaviour started to change, he became more forceful.’
Watson, of no fixed address, denies murdering Rikki between 28 and 29 November 1994.
The trial continues.
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