The man accused of murdering a pretty bank clerk a

The man accused of murdering a pretty bank clerk and her
father so he could own the family’s sports car claimed today
(Thurs) said that he left them alive and well on the evening
they were killed.

Bearded Benjamin Laing, 25, smartly dressed in a white shirt,
dark trousers and tie said that he went to the house of Matthew,
62, and Alison Manwaring,25, to buy their Ford Escort Cabriolet
car, on behalf of his friend, Mark Leslie, which had been advertised
at pnds stlng 7,900.

He claimed that he agreed a price of 7,750 pounds and Alison
wrote him out a receipt.

‘It was about 11.

30 pm when I left the house.

I know the time
from the clock of the cabriolet car I bought.

They stood outside
the house and said goodbye to me,’ he said.

The court heard that from about 11.

45pm on that night, April
23 last year, the pair were brutally murdered in their Barking,
Essex home.

Mr.

Manwaring was shot in his armchair and Alison was
sexually assaulted before being strangled.

The pair were then
dismembered in the bathroom.

The mutilated remains were later
found buried in ten bin bags in a shallow grave in the garden
of Laing’s girlfriend’s house in Abbey Wood, se London.

Laing,
of East Ham Manor Way, Becton, East London denies murdering
the pair.

Softly spoken Laing told the jury his mother was a Scot
and his father, was an author from Ghana, where he also ran
a school.

He said he had four brothers and four sisters including
half siblings.

Opening the defence case Laing’s barrister Mr.

Anthony
Scrivener QC admitted that Laing had buried the bodies along
with his best friend Mark Leslie, 24.

But he insisted that Laing had nothing to do with the
murders.

‘He will tell you all he knows.

He has spent a long time
protecting others.

‘Now comes the time when he will have to tell you the
truth and not protect others.

Can you rule out the explanation
he will give,’ counsel asked the jury.

Counsel said that there was not a scrap of evidence linking
Laing to the murder weapon, a sawn off shotgun, or the knives used
to cut up the bodies.

Mr.

Scrivener said that more than one person must have
been involved in the killings and the cleaning up operation
afterwards.

‘It is obviously a robbery that went wrong,’ counsel said.

He went on: ‘That house must have been covered in blood.

Blood would have spurted out in the bathroom.

That room would
have been saturated in blood.

There would have been blood all over the place.

Yet not one
item of clothing belonging to Mr.

Laing had a drop of blood on
it.

‘