Murder accused tells jury he was ‘apocalyptically angry’ when he killed woman
A man has told how he was “apocalyptically furious” when he used a hammer to kill a woman he described as a hybrid between his wife and a dumped lover.
Andrew Innes is on trial in Edinburgh High Court accused of murdering Bennylyn Burke, 25, and Jellica Burke, two, at a house in Troon Avenue, Dundee, between February 20 and March 5, 2021 .
The 52-year-old, who denies all charges but has admitted killing the couple and has filed a special defense of diminished responsibility, told the jury of the moment he killed Ms Burke with a hammer on February 21.
He said Ms. Burke reminded him of his wife from the neck down. From the head up, she looked like another woman he had started an affair with after meeting her at a Japanese rope bondage club, he said.
He told the jury, “The person standing in front of me not only looked like those two people, but actually was kind of those two people in a kind of hybrid.”
He said as Ms Burke stood in his kitchen preparing food: “I thought about all the bad things my wife had done to me and I got angry at the way she was treating me.
“I was angry, I started thinking crazy things.”
Innes, who told the court he tried to castrate himself with a zip tie, said he struck Ms Burke on the back of the head and then went to retrieve his samurai sword, which she was later used to stab.
“I remember the blade went in once,” said the software engineer.
“She was on the floor and I just hit her until she wouldn’t move.”
Two to three days later, Innes said, Jellica was killed. “It seemed logical to take her to her mother,” Innes told the court. “That’s what she asked for, so I took her to her mother’s.”
Innes, who told the court he was hypersexual, was asked under cross-examination by Advocate Alex Prentice KC where he placed the bodies.
He replied: “I dug them a respectable grave and gave them a Christian burial and then replaced the soil. That’s all I did.”
He said he planned to bury her at sea as he was an environmentalist, but instead put her under his kitchen floor because he was renovating the room.
Their bodies were discovered by police under the ground after a week of excavation work.
The court was told that Innes had Crohn’s disease and shortly before the murder he was admitted to Ninewells Hospital in Dundee and given steroid treatment.
When asked why he killed, he said, “Because the steroids drove me insane.”
He told Mr. Prentice that if he wanted to hide the bodies he would have gone to much greater lengths.
Meanwhile, the court was told Thursday that charges of kidnapping and assaulting a girl in the home at the time of the incident had been dropped, as well as part of another charge that he was planning to flee with a girl.
Innes denies murdering Mrs. Burke and Jellica, sexually assaulting Jellica and raping another child.
The child, he said, did not tell the truth about what happened to her.
During his cross-examination, he told Mr Prentice: “Some of your statements just don’t add up.”
Innes, who graduated from Aberdeen University with a computer science degree in 1992, went on to tell the jury that there was no point in using a sock to cover her mouth when there were “hundreds of other more appropriate items”, including sex toys.
“If I wanted to gag this kid, I would have used an actual gag,” he said.
Mr Prentice told the jury that on February 15 Innes searched online for chloroform and what it was used for and on February 23 looked up “how many murders in Scotland a year”.
Innes has also denied defeating the goals of justice.
The trial before Lord Beckett continues.
