West Yorkshire man who killed new bride and put body in suitcase found guilty of murder
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The body of grandmother Dawn Walker, 52, was found in a field four days after she married Thomas Nutt on October 27 last year.
Bradford Crown Court heard Nutt, 45, killed Ms Walker shortly after their wedding, storing her body in a cupboard before putting it in a suitcase and dumping it in bushes behind their West Yorkshire home.
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Hide AdJurors were told that Nutt, who did not give evidence in the trial, admitted the manslaughter of his wife on the basis that “he did not intend to cause her really serious harm at the time at which he killed her”.
But on Wednesday, a jury found him guilty of murder after three hours of deliberation. There were cheers in the courtroom after the verdict was announced.
At the start of the trial, prosecutor Alistair MacDonald QC told jurors: “It is often said that someone’s wedding day, and the period immediately following, is one of the happiest times of their life.”
He said that this was not the case for Ms Walker “because her body was found stuffed into a suitcase and dumped into some undergrowth in a field towards the back of this defendant’s house four days after she was married”.
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Hide AdMr MacDonald told the court that Nutt rang police on October 31 telling them his wife had gone missing after leaving their home in Shirley Grove, Lightcliffe, near Halifax, that morning, and he appeared to mount a search.
The prosecutor said the “hard and stark reality” was that the defendant “knew perfectly well that her body was lying dead in a cupboard at the marital home”.
Jurors were shown CCTV footage of Nutt wheeling a large suitcase out of the back of his house and into nearby bushes just as a police officer arrives at his front door to follow up the defendant’s missing person report.
He said one neighbour described Ms Walker, who had three daughters, as “chirpy and energetic”.
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Hide AdThis neighbour, the lawyer added, had said that in 2020 she had seen her with a “massive” black eye and cuts to her face.
The prosecutor said this neighbour remembers that the defendant was sent to prison after these injuries appeared but the couple resumed living together once he was released.
He said: “She (the neighbour) recollects that Dawn and the defendant argued quite often during this period – one minute they were loved-up and the next they would be arguing.
“She had never seen the defendant actually administer any physical violence to Dawn but she had heard arguing coming from the house and Dawn calling out: ‘Tommo, get off me’.”
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Hide AdMr MacDonald said another neighbour described going round to the house two months before the wedding after he “had never heard such screaming coming from a woman before”.
The prosecutor said an examination of Ms Walker’s body showed that she had suffered significant neck injuries which indicated there had been “a forceful application of pressure to her neck”.
Nutt will be sentenced on August 19.
Judge Jonathan Rose told him he would face a life sentence, with a minimum term to be set on that date.