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Becky Godden murder trial: accused 'confessed and led officers to body' Becky Godden murder accused 'confessed and led officers to body'
(about 2 hours later)
A man confessed to police that he had murdered a woman and then took officers to where he had buried her naked body, a court has heard. A taxi driver who is serving life in prison for the brutal, sexually motivated killing of Sian O’Callaghan led police to a shallow grave in a remote field where he had buried a second murder victim about eight years earlier, a jury has been told.
Christopher Halliwell, 52, admitted he had taken Becky Godden, then aged 20, from the streets of Swindon in Wiltshire, had sex with her and then strangled her, the jury was told. While Christopher Halliwell, 52, was under arrest for the murder of Swindon nightclubber O’Callaghan, he was driven by officers to the spot on the side of a road in Oxfordshire where her semi-naked body was discovered.
Bristol crown court heard that Godden’s skeletal remains were recovered from a field in Gloucestershire in March 2011 after Halliwell had taken police to the location. There, he told the detective who was with him: “I’m a sick fucker”, and took him to a ploughed field where he said he had buried a sex worker he had picked up on the streets of Swindon some years before, Bristol crown court was told.
The jury of six men and six women listened as Nicholas Haggan QC, prosecuting, opened the crown’s case against Halliwell. The naked body was disinterred and identified as that of Becky Godden, a sex worker who had last been seen in January 2003, when when she was 20, the jury heard.
He said: “What happened to Rebecca Godden? We, the prosecution, say the short answer to that question is that she was murdered. Halliwell initially “confessed” to having sex with Godden before strangling and burying her, the court was told. But he now denied her murder and was on trial for it.
“Her naked body was buried in a clandestine grave in a field which might be described as in the middle of nowhere. Dressed in suit and tie and surrounded by security officers, Halliwell watched from the dock as the prosecutor, Nicholas Haggan QC, said the last reliable sighting of Godden was when friends saw her getting into the back of a taxi in Swindon town centre.
“You might conclude that it was plain Rebecca was murdered. “After that, nothing more was heard from her,” Haggan said. “She made no contact with her family; she made no contact with any of the government and other agencies and financial institutions. She quite literally disappeared.”
“But secondly, this defendant, Christopher Halliwell, confessed to the police that between 2003 and 2005 – he couldn’t be sure of the date – he had taken a girl from the streets of Swindon. In March 2011, O’Callaghan went missing after leaving a nightclub in Swindon in the early hours of the morning. Haggan said CCTV footage showed that Halliwell had abducted her. He was arrested and taken to a spot on a B road near the white horse in Uffington, where her body was found. She had been stabbed in the head, strangled and the state of her clothing made it “perfectly clear” she was the victim of a sex attack.
“He told the police he had sex with her and then he killed her by strangling her. He told the police he stripped the girl of her clothes and concealed her naked body. Haggan went on to describe in detail the exchange between Halliwell and Det Supt Stephen Fulcher.
“Not only that but the defendant took the police to the location.” Halliwell told the officer: “We need to have a chat.” Fulcher gave Halliwell a cigarette and the taxi driver told him: “I’m a sick fucker. Is it too late to get help?” Fulcher replied: “It’s gone beyond that, Chris.”
Haggan said: “Had the defendant not told the police where he had buried that girl from the streets of Swindon, you might think that Rebecca’s remains to this day would be in that field in the middle of nowhere.” Halliwell said: “Another one.” Fulcher asked: “When?” to which Halliwell replied: “2003/4 or 5” and added: “Don’t know if you want to go for another.” Fulcher asked: “Where?” and Halliwell told him: “Eastleach”, a village in Gloucestershire. He said he could take him to the “exact spot”.
Halliwell, wearing a dark grey suit, white shirt and light blue tie, carried his own bundle of documents into the dock. Halliwell told Fulcher: “What the fuck’s wrong? Normal people don’t go around killing each other.” When asked by Fulcher if there were any other victims, Halliwell replied: “Isn’t that enough?”
Relatives of Godden sat in the public gallery, including her mother, Karen Edwards, and Edwards’s husband, Charlie, and Godden’s father, John Godden. Fulcher asked him if the circumstances were similar. Halliwell said: “Yes, she was a prostitute.” Fulcher told him that O’Callaghan had not been a sex worker. Halliwell replied to the effect that he was aware of that now.
Earlier, the trial judge, retired high court judge Sir John Griffith Williams, told the jury that Halliwell would not be represented by a barrister and would instead defend himself. The pair went to the field in Eastleach and the defendant pointed to the spot where he said he had buried the victim, it is claimed. He said he had picked her up from the red light district in Swindon, had sex with her, then strangled her. He said he had last visited the spot where he buried her three years earlier, the jury heard.
But Griffith Williams directed the jury not to speculate on the reason why. “It has no bearing on the issue of his guilt or innocence,” he said. “You will give his case the same careful consideration as if it had been advanced by counsel.” Some of Godden’s remains were eventually found, but a number of parts were missing, including her head. Despite the alleged confession and leading of officers to the spot where Godden’s remains were found, the prosecutor said Halliwell was now denying her murder.
Haggan told the court that Halliwell had also murdered Sian O’Callaghan, a woman who disappeared after a night out with friends at the Suju nightclub in Swindon in March 2011. “Had the defendant not told the police where he had buried that girl from the streets of Swindon, you might think that Rebecca’s remains to this day would be in that field in the middle of nowhere,” Haggan said.
He pleaded guilty to murdering O’Callaghan and was jailed for life. Relatives of Godden sat in the public gallery, including her father, John Godden, and mother, Karen Edwards, who wiped away tears as details of her daughter’s life were given.
“What happened to Sian? She too was murdered,” Haggan told the jury. “Her semi-naked body was found a few days after she disappeared. It was concealed by undergrowth in a remote location, not a great distance from the field where Rebecca’s body had been buried. The court heard that Godden’s parents separated when she was about six years old. “It is right to say Becky had a troubled adolescence,” Haggan said. “She became a heavy user of class A drugs and, at some point during her early to mid teens, she began earning a living as a sex worker operating in the Manchester Road area of Swindon.
“What relevance is that, you might think? The short answer is that this young woman was murdered by this defendant, Christopher Halliwell. “As is so often the case with people in her situation, her life became somewhat chaotic and contact with her parents became more sporadic.”
“How do we know that? We know that because he pleaded guilty to Sian’s murder and is currently serving a term of life imprisonment for that offence.” Despite her lifestyle, Godden kept in contact with her family, especially on Mother’s Day and her birthday on 4 April.
Edwards last saw her daughter on 16 December 2002, when she collected her after an appearance at a magistrates court, the jury heard. She took her daughter to a friend’s house in Swindon.
Godden was last seen a month later outside a nightclub in Swindon. A taxi pulled up and Godden approached it, returning to the car a short while later and arguing with the driver, Haggan said.
“A short time later, Becky told her friends that she was leaving and she went back to the taxi,” he told the jury. “She got into the rear of the vehicle and the vehicle drove away.”
The court heard that Godden did not make contact with her family on Mother’s Day in 2003, nor on her 21st birthday in April that year.
The trial judge, retired high court judge Sir John Griffith Williams, told the jury that Halliwell would not be represented by a barrister and would instead defend himself. Williams directed the jury not to speculate on the reason why.
The trial continues.