Giving evidence John Bridger denied love triangle

Giving evidence John Bridger denied love triangle victim Jill Hardy used to play him and Mark Crookshank off against each other.

He said he never saw her pretending to perform oral sex with Crookshank or deliberately cuddling up to him to ‘wind him up’.

Miss Hardy’s 11-year-old son Danny went to the same school and they continued to speak to each other on the phone ‘two or three times a week’ after they split up.

Prosecutor Richard Horwell asked him: ‘Were there any occasions where Jill played you against each other to wind you up or wind him up?’

He replied: ‘No.

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But a taxi driver later described Crookshank as ‘more like an inmate than a prison officer.

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David Keher said: ‘He told me his girlfriend was sleeping around then rings him up to tell him about it.

Then she wants him back.

‘I was thinking to myself it was strange he was talking to a complete stranger.

He also told me he would like to pack his job in because it was boring.

‘I will always remember him because nobody ever talks to me like that.

I thought he was more like an inmate than a prison officer.

‘Describing his girlfriend as a cow.

I remember telling him to call it a day if it was as bad as he said.

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He had picked up Crookshank in the summer of 1999 from Miss Hardy’s house in Frimley.

Victim Miss Hardy asked for assault charges against Crookshank to be dropped just five days before she was killed.

She told police on April 11 last year: ‘I do not wish Mark to be prosecuted.

I have ended the relationship with Mark so there can be no repeat of the incident.

I just want to forget the whole thing.

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Miss Hardy had complained on March 7 after he became drunk and pushed her against the wall, the court heard.

He was angry at her decision they should not live together because of financial difficulties.

She said in a statement: ‘Mark had quite a lot of debts.

I had started work at Frimley Park Hospital as a housekeeper but I would not get paid for a month.

‘We had a mutual agreement to live apart and I would quit work and go back on my benefits.

‘He had been drinking and he saw I had put away some of his things.

He said to me: “It didn’t take you long, did it?”

‘It was then that he went mad.

He pushed me on my chest very hard and I fell backwards.

My right arm hit the fan in the corner of the room.

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Crookshank’s immediate boss at the prison later told the jury that he was ‘obsessed’ with the woman he ended up killing.

Anthony Bradbury, the senior prison officer at Coldingley Category C Jail, got to know the defendant while serving together in the Delta wing.

And he said of Crookshank’s relationship with Jill Hardy: ‘They seemed very happy at first.

But towards the end they did start to have some differences of opinion.

‘A couple of times they broke up and got back together again.

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Mr Bradbury explained that Crookshank had already been involved in a previous marriage which failed in either late 1997 or early 1998.

‘Because of his past history I asked him: ‘Are you sure you are doing the right thing?’

‘He said: ‘Yes.

”

‘Then all of a sudden things began to go wrong.

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Mr Bradbury said the defendant seemed to be onto Miss
Hardy all the time and they moved back in together shortly before the killing:

‘He kept asking her: ‘Let’s get back together.

Let’s give it one more try.

‘He seemed to be on the edge all the time.

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But it was clear that the relationship had no future, the court heard.

‘He was agitated and upset the relationship was over.

He was still desperately trying to get back with her,’ continued Mr Bradbury.

‘He was more or less obsessed with her.

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Mr Bradbury added that the defendant was ‘on edge’ in the days leading up to the killing but he said he would never have predicted such a horrific outcome.

‘There was no way I could have forecast that,’ he said.

The trial continues tomorrow.

(TUES)
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