LIVE;KEY WITNESS IN PAUL CROFT MURDER TELLS COURT "SHE DIDN'T WANT TO CALLED GRASS"
A key witness who came forward more than a decade after a teenage dad-to-be was murdered is expected to give evidence in the trial of two men accused of killing him.
Paul Croft, 19, died in hospital a week after he was found seriously injured in an alleyway in Salford in 2005.
Now James Wilde, who would have been 16 at the time of events, and Paul O’Neill, 23 at the time, both deny murder in a Manchester Crown Court trial where it is alleged Paul was attacked with a golf club and a baseball bat.
A woman who claims to have information about the case is expected to give evidence to the jury this afternoon.
The prosecution say the woman, who will testify via videolink, overheard conversations pointing to the defendant's guilt, but was 'frightened' to provide information at the time of the killing.
Paul was attacked in a ginnell known as the Black Path next to the Lord Nelson pub in Pendlebury, on March 24, 2005.
But despite an extensive investigation no charges resulted until the incident was sent to GMP’s Cold Case Unit last year.
Mr Wilde, 29, of Rake Lane, Swinton, and Mr O’Neill, 36, of Broomhall Road, Pendlebury, both deny murder.
17:31CHRIS OSUH
"Maybe I got confused. It was a long time ago..."
The court then heard that the witness had told police that James Wilde was older than her, had been at her school, and described how he used to ‘bring penknives in’.
However Mr Wilde would have been 3-years-old when the witness left school, the court heard. The witness said she might have been told about his schooldays ‘off other people’, adding: “Maybe I got confused and meant the little school, it was a long time ago, we’re talking about 12 years...I didn’t even know the lad.”
“How do you know the lad you’re describing is called James Wilde?”, Mr Rhind said. “Because he was in the back garden with Paul O’Neill and all the other lads”, she said.
“How do know if you don’t know him?”, Mr Rhind said. “I don’t need to know him, I have seen him. We know of him on the streets, but we don’t know them, they’ve got nicknames, Wildey, Wally”, she said.
“There’s lots of Wildes in Clifton”, Mr Rhind said, naming some of the defendants’ older relatives.
“Not him”, she said, referring to one of the older Wildes. “He doesn’t burn bikes out, chat about and smoke draw”, she said.
“The James Wilde we’re talking about in 2005 would have been 16 years old”, Mr Rhind said. “I know that now”, the witness said, “Because I’ve been told by people who know them, people from around Clifton.”
“People who have been talking to you about James Wilde?”, Mr Rhind said. The witness was then challenged about saying James Wilde ‘looked older than her’ in 2005. She said this was ‘because he used to look older, he was scruffy all the time.’
“Are you just picking out the name James Wilde because you knew in October 2016 that he had been arrested?”, Mr Rhind said. “I didn’t know he had been arrested and that’s the truth”, she said.
“When I gave my statement I didn’t know he had been arrested. I have not spoke to anybody about it. Because if you speak to someone they’re going to go back to them and say ‘she knows all about it and she’s going to grass on you’.” The case has now been adjourned until 10am tomorrow.
17:29CHRIS OSUH
'I said I wouldn't be able to recognise his voice'
The witness was then asked if she had seen James Wilde in the conversations she describes. She said she had. But asked if she recognised his voice, she said: “No, I don’t not really.”
“I don’t really know them”, she added. “I only know Paul O’Neill because I know his brother Stephen who was in my class at school. I don’t know the lads I have had nothing to do with them. I have had no grievance with them. I have had nothing to do with them.”
“You did say in interviews you recognised his voice”, Mr Rhind said.
“No I said I wouldn’t be able to recognise his voice”, she said.
16:46CHRIS OSUH
Witness says she didn't know that the men had been arrested
Mr Rhind then asked her if she knew the men she had identified as being involved in the conversations had been arrested when she gave her account.
The witness said she didn’t.
“Are you telling us the only thing you have ever heard about this case is when your sister phoned you the day after Mr Croft was attacked?”, Mr Rhind asked.
“Yes”, the witness replied.
“Despite living and spending all your time on this estate for weeks and months and years after this incident you have not heard anything else apart from these snippets of conversation?”
“No, all I’ve heard is what they have been saying in the garden”, she said. “All my sister said to me was a lad was killed on the Black Path leading up to the doctors and the Nelson pub.”
“Mr Croft didn’t die until about a week later”, Mr Rhind said.
“I don’t know, that’s what she said to me”, the witness said.
16:39CHRIS OSUH
“Why would they be talking in the garden about a murder unless they’ve done it?”
Mr Rhind, who defends James Wilde, put it to the witness that she had given a statement after there had been ‘a lot of publicity’.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t read and write”, she said.
“And publicity on the telly”, Mr Rhind went on.
“I don’t watch the news”, the witness said.
“In the months leading up to when you gave your first statement there was a lot of chat and gossip about what happened”, Mr Rhind said.
“I didn’t chat about it. I’m not a gossip. I’m only telling youse what I have heard from my garden”.
Mr Rhind put it to the witness that she was only ‘relaying gossip and rumour’.
The witness replied: “Why would they be talking in the garden about a murder unless they’ve done it?”
“There was a lot of rumour on the estate”, Mr Rhind went on.
“I don’t know, I don’t listen to gossip. I kept myself to myself, you can ask anybody on there”, she said.
16:06
"I had threats to burn my house down, but I couldn’t give a statement because I’d be called a grass"
Mark Rhind, defending, is now cross-examining. He put it to the witness that in 2016 the witness had said she had always been prepared to help police, but her sister had said ‘don’t help them, they don’t help you’.
“They wouldn’t help me move so I wasn’t prepared to help them, because I wasn’t safe there with a child. I was stuck between two of them, Paul O’Neill and Mikey Martin”, she said.
Mr Rhind put it to the witness that in 2005 the witness had told police she wasn’t prepared to leave the Clifton area.
“That’s not true, I asked for a move....I had trouble, I had stones thrown through me window, I had threats to burn my house down, but I couldn’t give a statement because I’d be called a grass, a police informant.”
Paul Croft's mother Susan with a picture of her son
16:03CHRIS OSUH
“If she keeps opening her mouth I’m going to sort her out.”
She told court that on another occasion she saw Paul O’Neill talking to a group of people in the street and say: “If she keeps opening her mouth I’m going to sort her out.”
To the rear of Paul O’Neill’s house was ‘wasteground’ with trees and a den with tarpaulin, the court heard.
The witness said on another occasion she heard ‘same group of lads’ talking there, with Paul O’Neill saying it was a good idea to hide the iron bars on ‘The Cornies’ - the local name for the woodland.
She said she heard Mikey Martin say ‘he didn’t want owt to do with it, because he had to go to his stepdad’s because of what’s gone on’.
The witness said the same day one of her dogs jumped over the fence, and that Paul O’Neill handed it back, before she heard Paul O’Neill say ‘it’s a good idea where we’ve hid the bars’.
She said one of the group - she thinks James Wilde but wasn’t sure - said: “No-one will ever think of looking there for them there.”
15:54CHRIS OSUH
Witness tells court O'Neill told Wilde 'you hit him first'
A couple of days after the attack, she said, Mikey Martin, Paul O’Neill, James Wilde and three others were in the garden drinking ‘cheap lagers in the bottles’.
“When they finished they was throwing them in my garden, but my dogs were out. I went over to the fence and said to Mikey Martin ‘please stop throwing them you’re going to hurt my dogs’ paws;, and he said ‘I’ve got an iron bar for you.’
“Because of the conversation I’d heard a couple of days before it shocked me, I was frightened. I got the dogs and went in. But I could hear Paul O’Neill saying ‘shut up about the metal bars, you know why, you know where they are, don’t be telling anyone.’
“Paul O’Neill gripped Mikey Martin by the scruff of the neck, he didn’t fight him, but he was aggressive with him.”
Kyle said: “Remember when we burnt that bike out. One of them said we had to burn the bike out because Paul Croft was sat on it.”
Paul O’Neill said to James Wilde ‘you hit him the first, you gave him the first blow to his head.’ James Wilde replied ‘at least I didn’t hit him in the face - you hit him in the face’ to Paul O’Neill, the witness said.
She said Paul O’Neill then said ‘at least I didn’t kick him’.
To which Wilde is said to have said ‘at least he didn’t get up and give us a hit back’.
“An argument started with both of them, they got aggressive but they didn’t start fighting, just grabbing each other and shouting each other and stuff”, she said.
15:53CHRIS OSUH
'Stop spreading rumours... otherwise you'll end up like Paul Croft'
The witness told court that back in 2005 she was in her garden washing her dogs, when she heard Mikey Martin’s mother shouting that he had ‘wrecked his clothes again’.
“He said it wasn’t him and he didn’t mean to, he said he was stood there watching and didn’t do anything”, the witness said.
She said Mikey Martin’s mum said ‘you’re just as bad as them’.
She said just after that, Paul O’Neill came out of his garden, jumped over and came over to the fence of Mikey Martin’s home.
The witness said: “(O’Neill) said ‘stop spreading rumours, you know what about, otherwise you’ll end up like Paul Croft’. He’s just said it at the fence, he didn’t say it directly to anybody, he just said it out loud.
“Paul said something about an iron bar and Mikey Martin picked up an iron bar from the corner of a concrete slab and he passed it up to Paul in a hoodie top. It was like a scaffolding pole wrapped up in a hooded top. It was light grey on top and dark on the bottom with a black zip.
“Paul said ‘where’s that bat at?’ And Mikey Martin said ‘Paulie Pud’s got it’. I started getting the dogs in and just went in.”
It’s alleged that this occurred on March 25 - the morning after Paul Croft had been attacked. She said she learnt of the attack later on that day.
She said on March 26 Paul O’Neill came to her home at 9am on his own.
“He knocked on my door and asked if I’d heard anything about what was going on in the neighbourhood. I played a bit thick and said ‘no’. Obviously because I’d seen what had happened with the scaffolding tube I thought he was referring to that and said ‘no’, I changed the conversation and said ‘do you know anybody who wants a fruit machine and a boy’s mountain bike’, because I needed to get rid of them for the space.
“He had a quick look and said ‘I’ll take them off your hands’.”
The witness said Mr O’Neill took the fruit machine, with the help of another man, before returning for the bike.
15:53CHRIS OSUH
She 'didn't want to be known as a grass'
The woman has begun giving evidence. She told court she was living in the Clifton area of Salford with her son and partner at the time with which the case is concerned.
The court heard in August 2005 she gave police information about what she had ‘seen and heard’.
The following month she gave a fuller account, but did not want to make an ‘official statement’ because she lived near Mr O’Neill and a man called ‘Mikey Martin’.
She told court: “They’re well known round there, they’re like a group of lads, they do do things like break into people’s houses and smash windows if you’re known as a grass”, she said.
She said she didn’t want to be known as a ‘grass’ because she had a young son and was pregnant at the time.
She later gave a statement to police under the name ‘Miss X’.
Last year she was approached by police to see if she was prepared to give evidence. She said she’d agreed because: “I’d moved out of the area and I was safer, I wasn’t near them.”
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