This article is more than 6 months old

This article is more than 6 months old

A teenager accused of strangling a teaching assistant in Lancashire used a wheelie bin to transport her body, a court has heard.

The 17-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is alleged to have murdered Lindsay Birbeck in woodlands as she took an afternoon walk in Accrington on 12 August last year.

Although the accused denies killing Birbeck, 47, the jury at Preston crown court were told on Wednesday that he accepted responsibility for moving her body to a nearby cemetery in a blue wheelie bin.

In a statement provided to police on 30 August, which was read to the court, the defendant, who has autism and a learning disability, said he had been approached by a man he did not know in the area to “get rid of a body” for him.

“He said that he would pay me a lot of money when everything was clear,” the statement continued. “He showed me where the body was and he went away straight away.”

David McLachlan QC, prosecuting, told the jury that on the day she had disappeared, Birbeck, a “keep-fit enthusiast”, had gone for a walk to a woodland area behind her home on Burnley Road just after 4pm.

CCTV images seen by jurors showed the defendant walking towards the area where Birbeck was last seen around an hour and a half before she left home, and then leaving the area near the coppice about two hours later.

Birbeck’s estranged husband reported her to the police as missing from home shortly after midnight on 13 August, hours after she had failed to keep an arrangement to make dinner for their daughter and her boyfriend.

After a community-led effort to find her, Birbeck’s naked body was found in a shallow ditch by a dog walker in Accrington cemetery 12 days after she went missing.

Clear plastic sheeting and plastic bags covering her body were found to be “indistinguishable” from those seized from the defendant’s home, McLachlan told the court.

A postmortem found she had died from neck injuries that were so severe they may have been caused by “stamping, kicking or kneeling on the front of the neck”.

The court heard that the teenager had taken a wheelie bin to the area on the day that he is alleged to have killed Birbeck, but had not moved her body until 17 August, when he was seen by witnesses dragging the bin.

Hair found inside the bin was found to match DNA samples from Birbeck, and her shoes were found in a skip in the cemetery.

The trial continues.