Accused: Jonathan Clarke

A Shropshire man accused of murdering a teenage student by setting him on fire told a court if he had been responsible for the killing it would have been a “bloodbath”.

Jonathan Clarke told Norwich Crown Court he would have done something much worse to kill Simon Everitt than pour petrol over him.

Clarke, of Queen Elizabeth Way, Malinslee, Telford and co-defendants Jimi-Lee Stewart, 25, and 40-year-old Maria Chandler, both from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, all deny murdering Mr Everitt last June.

Clarke, 19, known to his friends as “Munch”, insisted he was sitting on Yarmouth beach on the night his co-accused claimed they helped Clarke abduct and kill Mr Everitt, a 17-year-old engineering student.

Clarke, under cross-examination by Mr Paul Lewis, for Stewart, told the court: “If I was there I’d have told him that I was going to kill him.

“If I wanted him to confess to something, I would have done something worse than pour petrol over him.

“If I did do it and I terrorised him, I would have chopped a finger off or a toe. I would have dismembered him bit by bit. That’s how I would have done it.

“If he said something to me, I would have broken his face in with my fist or broken his ribs or used him as a punch bag. It would have been like a bloodbath.”

The jury has already heard claims by Chandler that she acted as the driver to Mautby woods, near Yarmouth, where Mr Everitt was tortured and killed.

She said she had not been aware of the plan to kill him and had been forced into co-operating.

Stewart told the jury he went along to the scene of the killing intending only to scare Mr Everitt .

He told police Clarke threw a match after Mr Everitt had been doused in petrol.

Mr Everitt, Clarke and Stewart had all been dating the same woman, Fiona Statham.

Giving evidence to the jury, Clarke said his hatred for Mr Everitt stemmed from that discovery.

The case continues.

By Crime Correspondent Kirsty Smallman