Express & Star

Megan Bills murder trial: Accused did not mean to kill teenager during sex, court hears

A murder suspect told the truth when he insisted in a letter to his mother that the death of a teenage girl while they had sex was an accident, a jury heard.

Published
Megan Bills

Miss Jane Bickerstaff QC, defending Ashley Foster, told Wolverhampton Crown Court that he was contemplating suicide when he penned the note after his arrest following the discovery of the decomposing body of 17-year-old Megan Bills in a cling-film wrapped wardrobe in his room at a hostel for former prisoners in Highgate Road, Brierley Hill.

The lawyer said: "It is likely to be truthful. He was clearing his conscience thinking he would never see his mother again."

Foster, aged 24, had been freed from jail three days earlier and had only met Megan for the first time hours before they had sex on April 16, Easter Sunday, last year, the court heard.

He insisted in the letter: "She tells me she likes to be strangled so I obliged...she loved it....but then as I released her, her eyes closed." He maintained: " I didn't intend it to end like this. I didn't mean it."

Consensual

Miss Bickerstaff continued in her summing up: "It was consensual sex. He was with a pretty, willing, sexual partner, why on earth would he want to kill or harm her? This was two young people experimenting.

"She was a young woman living quite a dangerous lifestyle. The defendant asked if he could strangle her and she agreed. He was lost in his own sexual pleasure and it was only when he stopped that he realised something had gone disastrously wrong."

Mr Crispin Aylett QC, prosecuting, told the jury as he summed up: "Foster has provided you with nothing more than lies, self pity and cowardice. The letter to his mother is not a truthful account but he does not have a better one. The truth is he murdered her.

"He was playing out his sexual fantasy and strangling her was part of that. He could have released his hold any time but just kept the pressure on until he had finished."

Megan's decomposing body had been hidden in a cling-film wrapped wardrobe for almost three weeks before it was discovered by hostel staff on May 4, the day before she was reported as missing.

The case continues.