A stepfather described as "sexually obsessed" with his stepdaughter joined her for a birthday meal three days before she was allegedly killed, a court has heard. Nathan Owens, 34, denies murdering Carla Georgescu, a second-year psychology student at the University of Central Lancashire, who was found dead at her halls of residence on her 20th birthday on February 5, 2026.
Birthday weekend and restaurant meal
Preston Crown Court was told that Carla and her mother, Janina, spent the weekend of January 31 and February 1 shopping for presents and watching TV together. On Sunday, February 1, Owens drove from the family home in Hartlepool and joined the women for a meal at Kimji Korean restaurant in Preston.
At the end of the meal, Janina left her husband and daughter together at the table, the trial heard. Janina said her daughter was "happy and excited" and looking forward to a trip to Romania on February 5. After the meal, Janina and Owens dropped Carla off at her accommodation and returned to the north east coast.
CCTV shows return to Preston
The jury was shown footage of Owens arriving at Ribble Hall on February 1 and parking in designated bays on campus. A second CCTV compilation showed Owens returning to Preston in the early hours of Wednesday, February 4. This time he parked some distance from the accommodation and covered his head with a blanket before walking to the student block, prosecutor Nicholas Lumley KC said.
Mr Lumley KC told the jury: "Why choose to go that night? We may never know. He would have known that Carla was due to leave for Romania the next day, to go with her friend to go on a trip to that country. He would have known she had struck up a romantic relationship with a young man who she also planned to see in the near future. It could have been there was a degree of sexual jealousy. Did he not want her to be romantically involved with anyone else?"
Alleged attack and evidence
The prosecution alleges Owens stabbed and strangled Carla before leaving her in her bedroom. She was found slumped against her wardrobe on February 5, with injuries to her head, defensive marks to her hands, and sexual injuries. A belt was tightly wrapped around her neck, the jury was told. Carla's mother asked campus security to check on her daughter when she did not answer calls or messages on her birthday. When officers discovered Carla, they initially thought she had taken her own life.
In the week before Carla died, the prosecution says Owens viewed videos of himself having sex with an effigy wearing her nightdress and with her toy dolls. Mr Lumley KC said: "Her death was the culmination, the end point, of weeks, months and perhaps years of a one-sided sexual obsession. And it was the beginning of a complex murder investigation, which led to his door in Hartlepool. It was he who was sexually fixated on Carla and it was he, Nathan Owens, who had killed Carla."
Owens denies murder, strangulation and grievous bodily harm. The trial continues.
