Teacher told police of fiancee’s stab death ‘nightmare’

Andrew Lindo said he just “lost it” following a confrontation with Marie Stewart about their young daughter last December.

Lindo, 29, who denies murder but has admitted manslaughter, was being interviewed following the discovery in February of Miss Stewart’s body in a bag in the garage of their home in Perseverance Place, Holmfirth. He admitted that he had killed her.

He told officers in a recording played yesterday at Bradford Crown Court that Miss Stewart was in bed and refused to answer his questions about what she had been doing earlier in the three-year-old’s room.

He said he suspected she had been mistreating her and would not let the matter drop and that Miss Stewart, 30, became angry and began hitting him. He said when he grabbed her arms to stop her she spat in his face.

He later described that as a “watershed event”.

“It just kind of snowballed from there. It was like a nightmare. I just grabbed hold of her throat and started squeezing. Everything happened so fast, it was just so weird. I just thought I’ve got to get his woman away from my daughter.

“I just kept squeezing and squeezing and squeezing. I kind of rolled my arm over her eyes so she wouldn’t look at me.”

After she went purple and red and stopped making a noise, he wrapped her in a duvet and heaved her into suitcase from the garage before dragging it down to the living room.

The suitcase was too small and her legs were hanging over the side. “It was all so clumsy really.”

He said she began making noises again and he then used a belt to strangle her to make her quiet and at one point hit her on the head with a child’s Winnie the Pooh chair.

Having taken the case into the garage and hearing further noises he put bubble wrap over her head so she could not look at him before stabbing her in the neck with a kitchen knife.

“I just wanted to shut her up, I just wanted her to be quiet.” He said the noises she had made felt “accusatory” to him.

He then moved her body into a bigger travel bag which was left in the garage and decided to make her father and others thinks she had left him. He said his lover Angela Rylance knew nothing about what he had done.

Earlier in the interviews he claimed the relationship with Miss Stewart had broken down after she had belittled and demeaned him. Although they were living in the same house he said they had not been a couple for some time.

The trial continues.