Twists and turns in Luke Walker Crete murder trial

She said she heard screams from the apartment block where they lived five days before Chelsea Hyndman died.

But friends of the couple insist she fell when a drinking game on a girls' night out on the holiday isle of Crete went tragically wrong, causing the injuries that led to her death.

The contradictory accounts came amid dramatic scenes during the trial in Crete.

Walker, aged 25, of Gayfield Avenue, Brierley Hill, denies murdering 20-year-old Chelsea, who died in hospital on May 17 2010 from peritonitis after being admitted with stomach pains the previous day.

But Greek prosecutors claim her injuries were caused when he beat her in their apartment.

A statement read to the court from Eda Quirici, a neighbour of Walker and Miss Hyndman in the party resort of Malia, said she often heard "intense arguments" between the pair.

She lived in the apartment below them and said: "These arguments were so intense, so fierce, that I could not sleep for the noise."

In her statement she said that, although she was not absolutely certain of the date, she remembers hearing an argument and shouting and screams at around 4am on May 12 2010, when she returned to her apartment from her bar job. I heard the girl screaming like someone does like when someone is being chased or being beaten," she said.

"I heard furniture being dragged about like when someone is trying to chase a person."

Earlier witness Louise Purdy told the Mixed Criminal Court in the Cretan capital of Heraklion that Miss Hyndman fell on a night out while playing a game in which one of the group would shout a word and they all had to drop to the floor.

Miss Purdy, aged 27, said: "We left one particular bar and, as we were walking up the road, one of the girls shouted out the word.

"We all had to fall to the floor and the last person had to have a forfeit. As I got up Chelsea was running diagonally in front of me.

"All I remember is watching her feet... she had very high heels on and the floor was very cobbly and as she was going across me her feet were very unsteady as if she was about to fall. The last thing I know Chelsea had hit the floor, she had gone down."

In the days that followed, Miss Hyndman became increasingly ill.

There were dramatic scenes today as statements were read to the court claiming to be from one woman who signed her name simply as 'Jessie' and another from a man identified as 'Peter Rogers'.

The typed letter from Jessie, dated 2010, said she knew the couple and that when Walker was sober he was okay, but when they went out drinking he was jealous of other men talking to Miss Hyndman.

It claimed to know of two other times when Walker beat Miss Hyndman and kicked her in the stomach.

It added: "All do not know what goes on behind closed doors and they are too scared to come out to tell you."

Walker's friends and family shouted out in court as it was read and asked: "Jessie? Who's Jessie?"

Another document submitted to the court that was sent to Greek Police from Peter Rogers said he had overheard a conversation between Walker's father Patrick and a friend at an event in the West Midlands in which he is claimed to have said that Walker admitted to him he had hit Miss Hyndman when he was drunk.

George Pyromallis, Walker's defence barrister, submitted to the court that the documents could easily be false and he was uneasy about them being allowed in evidence.

"It is troubling how this paper can appear in the case file and it could easily be forged," he said.

Suspect was never violent says friend - See today's Express & Star