A pregnant woman was found dead on a bathroom floor after being repeatedly stabbed by her partner, a murder trial has heard. Stephan Garner has admitted killing 33-year-old Amber O’Brien, who was expecting twins, but denies murdering her.
Garner killed Ms O’Brien in his flat in Blackley, north Manchester, after the pair had an argument, jurors at Manchester Crown Court were told. Ms O’Brien’s body was left on the bathroom floor of an eighth-floor flat in Blackley, where she had been living with Garner, the father to her nine-week-old unborn twins. She was naked, ‘cold to the touch’ and covered in a blue tarpaulin lying in ‘pools of water’.
Prosecution opens case
“How Amber died, only the defendant who is alive can say,” Nigel Power KC said, opening the case for the prosecution. “She had been stabbed repeatedly in the neck and face. The pathologist recorded more than 60 separate stab, incised and puncture wounds, 32 of them to her face and neck.”
Prosecutors said Garner killed her in the early hours of April 18. Mr Power said of Garner: “He then spent the next day and a half stripping her, washing her body, bleaching his flat, bagging up her bloodstained clothing, destroying her telephone and getting rid of his own, before the truth caught up with him.”
Alleged confession and defence
He allegedly told a relative he had been ‘cleaning up’ the bathroom after buying bleach and scouring sponges from Poundland. Police forced their way into the flat just after 6pm the following day, after Garner allegedly told his cousin that he’d ‘stabbed her in the neck twice’, the court heard.
“She had been threatening me,” Garner claimed. Jurors heard Garner, 31, of Somerton Court, Blackley, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter but denies murder. They were told the pair had been in a relationship for about three months prior to Ms O’Brien’s death.
Relationship background
Ms O’Brien told her brother she and Garner ‘argued a lot over silly things’, and that she was ‘unhappy about his mood swings’, jurors were told. The court heard that two weeks before her death, she told her sibling of Garner: “Something ain’t fitting with me.” There was also said to have been a ‘running dispute’ over Ms O’Brien’s flat in Middleton.
Jurors were told Garner wanted her to give it up and move in with him, but that she felt ‘pressured’. She did move into the flat in Blackley three weeks prior to her death, jurors were told. Mr Power said the ‘friction was not all one way’ in the relationship and Ms O’Brien could be heard threatening Garner on an audio recording.
Events leading to arrest
Prosecutors argue that ‘doesn’t come anywhere close’ to justifying Garner’s actions. The court heard that in the early hours of April 18, Ms O’Brien called her brother and said: “I can’t stand him, I’m not staying here.” She left the flat but later returned with Garner, it was said.
Garner was arrested at about 7pm on April 19. When officers attended the flat they noticed an ‘overpowering smell of bleach’, the jury was told. He was interviewed twice by police and made no comment on both occasions, prosecutors said.
At trial, Garner is expected to say that he did not intend to cause Ms O’Brien serious bodily harm and that he was experiencing a loss of control at the time. He is expected to allege that he tried to leave the flat in the early hours of April 18, but that Ms O’Brien punched him and was holding a knife, and told him the ‘babies had been aborted’. The trial, which is expected to last seven days, continues.
