BUCHEL: JACKASS STUNTMAN WAS BEATEN WHEN HE WAS OUT COLD
A ‘body in the lake’ murder victim was beaten by one of his ‘Jackass’ friends when he had drunkenly passed out on the floor of his flat,’ a court heard.
Neill Buchel, 39, copied the hit TV show by performing a series of bizarre stunts, including setting his pubic hair on fire.
His severed left thigh was discovered in White Hart Lakes in Dagenham by a young fisherman on 1 April last year.
Three of his friends, Scot Hunt, 41, and Chas Quye, 36, Elvis Kwiatkowski, 36, are on trial for allegedly chopping him up and scattering his body parts around the nature reserve surrounding the lakes.
The victim, known as ‘Southy’, was brutally beaten at Quye’s flat before his murder, it is said.
Another two men present on the night of Mr Buchel’s alleged murder, Colin Bushaway, 61, and Alan Quinn, also face trial for perverting the course of justice for helping dispose of the body.
On the evening of 13 March, the evening Mr Buchell disappeared, he was allegedly so drunk at Quye’s flat at Stansgate Road, Dagenham
he could not stand.
Claire Sacco, a long-time friend of Quye, said she saw him punch the victim’s head as he was slumped on the living room floor.
She told the court she had arrived at Quye’s flat at around 4pm and spent the afternoon drinking beer and smoking crack cocaine with Quye and his friends.
She said it was 6.30pm by the time she even noticed that Mr Buchel was in the small flat, because he had been passed-out in the living room while they had been in the kitchen.
‘I saw someone sitting on the floor with his legs out stretched, he appeared to be very drunk because he had his head on his legs and he was swaying,’ she said.
‘I only found out his name in the newspapers when I heard he’s died.’
‘Chas punched the man to the head, the one that was on the floor, it was a proper head punch, the man didn’t do anything – I felt quite sorry for him but he didn’t say anything.
‘I thought, “Am I seeing what I’m seeing?” – he’s just sitting on the floor drunk like that.’
‘Then Chas hit him a second time – then I said something.’
‘I said “Why are you doing that, he hasn’t done anything”.’
‘Chas said: “He’s getting blood all over my floor” so I said “get him out of the flat then”.
‘I said he was being a bully and all that – I don’t like bullies – he was harmless, he didn’t do anything wrong, let alone harm anyone.’
She added: ‘It wasn’t a joke – he hit him very hard more than once, I didn’t find it funny at all, I don’t know if anyone else did because no one did anything.’
Ms Sacco said she left the gathering a short while later in disgust at Quye’s treatment of the man on the floor.
The court has heard how Mr Buchel, Hunt and Quye were all obsessed with US television series Jackass, which features the stars performing dangerous and disgusting pranks.
Footage taken from the defendants’ phones shows Mr Buchel singeing his own pubic hair, eating chillies and being shot at with a BB gun while wearing woman’s underwear.
In one they sing the Kings of Leon hit ‘Sex is on Fire’ as Mr Buchel rubs a Scotch Bonnet chilli pepper into his penis
Other pranks include the men heating up a spoon and inserting it into their genital areas.
Hunt, of Braintree Road, Dagenham, Quye, of Stansgate Road, Dagenham, and Kwiatkowski, of Clopton Close, Royston, Hertfordshire, all deny murder.
Hunt, Quye and Bushaway, along with Quinn, of Lynette Road, Dagenham, deny conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
Kwiatkowski and 47-year-old Bradley Andison, of Villa Road, Rochester, Kent, have admitted attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Bushaway, of Gregory Crescent, Eltham, southeast London, also denies an alternative charge of preventing a lawful burial.
The trial continues
