Fourth day of deliberations at Newbury nanny murder trial

After five weeks if evidence at Reading Crown Court the twelve jurors retired on Monday morning to consider whether 64-year-old David Burgess, formerly of Stoneyfield, Beenham, murdered 17-year-old Yolande Waddington (pictured), who was found dead in a ditch in Clay Lane, Beenham, on October 30, 1966.
The au pair, who had only moved to Beenham from Newbury five days before her death, had been stripped naked, stabbed and strangled.
Before the jury, made up of seven men and five women, retired, the Honourable Mr Justice Andrew Nicol went through a summary of the evidence.
He firstly reminded the jury that nine months after Miss Waddington was killed Burgess was convicted of murdering nine-year-old girls Jeanette Wigmore and Jacqueline Williams, whose bodies were found in a disused gravel pit in Beenham on April 17, 1967.
Justice Nicol then outlined the case of Joel Bennathan QC, defending, who told the court that corrupt police officers framed Burgess for the 1967 murders.
Mr Bennathan also argued that Burgess was in bed when Miss Waddington was killed, claiming that Miss Waddington’s employer, Peter Jagger, who owned Oakwood Farm in Clay Lane, Beenham, at the time, killed his nanny.
Conversely, the jury was reminded that the prosecution claim the chances of blood detected on a polythene sack found at the murder scene not being that of Burgess was smaller than one in a billion.
Earlier in the trial prosecutor John Price QC told the court how Burgess confessed to murdering Miss Waddington to prison officers at Durham Prison in 1968 and 1969.
Prison officers claim Burgess told them he killed Miss Waddington after a sexual encounter in a barn went wrong, but when the defendant was questioned by police last year he said he made the stories up.
Justice Nicol also told the jury that Burgess was on the run from the police for 18 months after escaping from Leyhill open prison near Bristol in September 1996.
Before retiring to consider its verdict, The Honourable Mr Justice Andrew Nicol told the jury: “Your test is not to make a relative judgement between different suspects. You need to decide whether the evidence put before you makes you sure that David Burgess was her killer.”
Burgess denies murder.