Man murdered secret lover and hid body in car boot for days before dumping it at sea, court hears

Zsuzsanna Besenyei's body was found six days after she went missing

Zsuzsanna Besenyei's body washed up on the Jersey coastline six days after she went missing. (SWNS)

A man murdered his secret lover and hid her body in the boot of her car for three days before dumping it at sea in a bid to stage her suicide, a court heard.

Jamie Lee Warn, 55, is accused of killing Zsuzsanna Besenyei, 37, before driving her Ford Fiesta to a beach to make it look like she had driven there herself.

Her lifeless body was found washed up at La Pulec bay in St Ouen on the Channel Island of Jersey six days after she went missing.

It was so decomposed that pathologists were unable to determine the cause of death and no evidence could be recovered from the car as a result of the water damage.

The elaborate cover-up was an attempt to "literally get away with murder", Jersey Royal Court heard.

Crown advocate Simon Thomas said: "The defendant may not have achieved what he set out to do, namely to dispose of Miss Besenyei’s body so that it would never be found. What he managed to achieve, however, was to ensure that her body was in such a state when it was recovered that it was not possible to say conclusively what the cause of death was.

"This is the final and most important aspect of his cover-up."

Mr Thomas told the court Ms Besenyei initially went to Mr Warn's flat on 10 May last year as she was trying to collect money from him.

The two had worked together for a number of years at Les Charrières Hotel in St Peter but were now secretly involved.

While the defendant had a girlfriend, the two frequently exchanged texts and sent explicit photos, the jury was told.

Ms Besenyei sent the accused a message from her phone at 19.30 as she arrived and the prosecution believe she was killed sometime between then and when the defendant was seen buying hand sanitiser at 20.20.

Investigators have been unable to pinpoint when the victim was killed.

But Mr Thomas told the court the defendant had disposed of her body “in the dead of the night” on a “remote beach”.

Admitting much of the evidence was circumstantial, he told the jury: "There is the question of precisely where Miss Besenyei was killed. The prosecution is not in a position to place before you conclusive evidence as to location."

He suggested it was ‘likely’ she was killed in her car.

He added: "What makes it abundantly clear that the defendant did kill her is the way in which he acted in the hours and days that followed."

The jurors were shown CCTV images from 11 May of the accused leaving Miss Besenyei’s car and buying parking cards, although he had no car of his own.

He then went to work as normal, but later made a stop at his bank and phone records showed that at the time he was walking there he was searching for tide times and the weather forecast.

Later that evening he went out to the Earl Grey pub with his girlfriend, the court heard.

That same day, no one saw Ms Besenyei, who first missed a hair appointment and then a booking to get her eyebrows done.

"There was a very obvious reason why she did not turn up for either of those appointments: she was dead," Mr Thomas said.

The court also saw footage of Warn typing on a phone the following day, Saturday 12 May, as he walked through town.

The prosecution claims this was to compose a message to himself from Miss Besenyei’s phone asking whether he was at home.

Mr Thomas said this was supported by mobile phone tower activity logs.

While Ms Besenyei’s phone was never found, some of her messages were able to be recovered by the service provider, the court heard.

Over the course of that day, the Crown says he continued to send messages from her phone "to give the impression this was ongoing communication with someone who was still alive".

Over the following days Mr Warn continued sporadic communication from Ms Besenyei’s phone, Mr Thomas said, to give the impression she was still alive.

Police began a missing-person search for Ms Besenyei after her car was found on the beach two days before her body was found ‘lying on top of a body of seaweed’ on 16 May.

It had not been carried away by the tide.

Mr Warn denies murder and two counts of perverting the course of justice by giving false statements to police officers.

The trial continues.

SWNS