WATCH: Murder accused claims to be alleged victim’s “rock”

Monday 11 March 2019

A man accused of murder told Police that he was his alleged victim’s “shoulder to cry on and her rock”.

Jamie Lee Warn (55) said this of the woman he has been accused of murdering, 37-year-old Zsuzsanna Besenyei, one day before her body was discovered in the shallows near L’Etacq.

His comments emerged on the fifth day of Mr Warn’s trial as part of the prosecution’s evidence to support their claim that the 55-year-old killed Miss Besenyei, who was apparently his "secret" lover, hid her body in the boot of a car for three days before dumping her on a beach at low tide.

Mr Warn denies murdering Miss Besenyei and has also pleaded ‘not guilty’ to two other counts of perverting the course of justice linked to an allegation that he lied to Police during the investigation of the Hungarian national’s death and disappearance.

Pictured: 37-year-old Zsuzsanna Besenyei was found dead in the shallow water at Stinky Bay near L'Etacq last May.

Mr Warn’s first Police statement was read to the Court by Crown Advocate Matthew Maletroit, co-counsel for the prosecution alongside Crown Advocate Simon Thomas.

In his statement, taken on Tuesday 15 May 2018 – one day before Miss Besenyei’s body was found by a dog walker at Stinky Bay – Mr Warn told Detective Constable Lyn Lang that he and Miss Besenyei had worked together at Les Charrières Hotel in St. Peter before it closed down. He said he had been employed as a handyman and she was a housekeeper.

Mr Warn spoke of Miss Besenyei’s relationship with her ex-boyfriend - who has already given evidence during the trial - which Mr Warn described as being “very on-off” and, at that time, “it’s been more off than on."

He told DC Lang that he’d often “been to collect” Miss Besenyei after she and her ex-boyfriend argued, adding: “I was always her shoulder to cry on and her rock.”

Although in the statement, Mr Warn denied any sexual relationship with Miss Besenyei, he did admit that she had sent him some explicit pictures of herself to him and that “she would get jealous” when he spent time with his girlfriend. 

Video: Jamie Lee Warn leaving the Royal Court after the first week of his trial comes to a close.

The Court also heard from Detective Constable Matthew Coleman who interviewed Mr Warn on the evening of 14 May last year whilst making enquiries about Miss Besenyei’s disappearance. DC Coleman said that, along with another Police Officer, he located Mr Warn at the Earl Grey pub in First Tower at around 20:00 on that evening. 

When asked by Crown Advocate Maletroit whether he noticed anything about Mr Warn’s appearance, DC Coleman told the Court that he had “noted that he had an abrasion to the bridge area of his nose.”  

The Detective Constable said that when he asked Mr Warn about this injury, the 55-year-old reportedly said that “he was currently sleeping on the couch at home” and that “during the night he had fallen off the couch and hit his nose on the coffee table… he said it had happened the previous evening".

DC Coleman explained that the mark “wasn’t across, it was down his nose".

When asked about what he could gather about the relationship between Mr Warn and Miss Besenyei from text and Facebook messages between the two of them on Mr Warn’s phone, DC Coleman remarked that “it seemed to be a complicated one” and that it “wasn’t purely a friendship".

Pictured: Mr Warn's Police statement was read into evidence by the prosecution.

The Police Officer explained that “there were elements [of the messages] that suggested there was a sexual nature to their relationship".

Answering questions from Defence Advocate James Bell, representing Mr Warn, DC Coleman confirmed that Mr Warn had in fact contacted the Police station himself, giving rise to this interview, and that he had been fully co-operative with them. 

The Court has already heard that a post-mortem examination, carried out by Home Office Pathologist Dr Russell Delaney, did not result in a conclusive finding as to how Miss Besenyei came by her death due to “the condition of the body".

However, the jury was told by another pathologist tasked with examining samples from Miss Besenyei’s neck that the hotel worker suffered a fracture consistent with “direct pressure” being applied to the throat just days before she died.

As the trial enters its second week, the jury have so far heard testimony from a man from whom Miss Besenyei sub-let a flat who received an “odd” text from her phone the day after the prosecution say she died; a supermarket worker who believes to have seen Mr Warn purchasing anti-bacterial hand gel; and the CSI who investigated the defendant’s home and Miss Besenyei’s abandoned, water-logged car. 

The trial continues.