The man who allegedly murdered schoolgirl Tia Sharp told a prison officer that her death was an accident and insisted “I’m not like Ian Huntley”, a court heard today.
Prison officer Warren Fegan, who was working at Belmarsh when Stuart Hazell was taken there in August last year, told the Old Bailey that the 37-year-old denied “anything sexual” had happened between him and Tia, whose father Steve Carter, lives in Moulton, Northampton.
Hazell is accused of sexually assaulting and murdering the 12-year-old between August 2 and 10 last year, which he denies.
Mr Fegan said: “He was saying ‘I’m not like Ian Huntley, it was nothing sexual, I’m not a nonce’.
“He was saying that the press was trying to make it look like it was sexual but it wasn’t. He was saying that he loved his stepchildren (sic).
“He said that it was an accident, she had fallen down stairs and broken her neck.”
Prosecutors claim that Hazell killed Tia and hid her body in the loft of the house that he shared with the youngster’s grandmother, Christine Bicknell.
Mr Fegan said: “He said that he didn’t know what to do and he picked her up and took her upstairs and laid her on the bed, and he thought that she would get better.
“He didn’t know what to do, so he wrapped her in a sheet and put her in the loft.”
He said Hazell was full of remorse and felt sorry and guilty.
“He asked me how hard it would be to prove not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter,” the prison officer told the court.
Mr Fegan told the jury that when Hazell was assessed at the prison, the risk of him harming himself was “at the far extreme”.
“He really wanted to kill himself. He was saying he was sorry and he felt guilty.
Junior prosecutor Jocelyn Ledward read a statement from senior prison officer Gerald King, whom Hazell also told Tia had died in an accident.
The statement read: “He stated that he wanted to end it and take his life.
“He didn’t want to be seen as an Ian Huntley.
“He added that it was an accident, that he had been playing with her at the top of the stairs as they always did.
“She fell down the stairs and broke her neck.
“He wished he could turn back time. He then laid her on the bed for a while, then wrapped her in a blanket and put her in the roof.”
He said Hazell went on to say that he wished he had said Tia’s death was an accident, but had listened - and joined in - with the family saying what they would do the person responsible for her disappearance.
“He wished he had told them it was an accident as he was with the family listening to what they would do to whoever had taken her or hurt her. And he was saying what he would do to this person as well.”
Mr King went on: “He wanted to make sure that people knew that it wasn’t a sexual thing.
“He wished that he had explained the accident to his partner but he didn’t want to ruin the relationship.”
Fellow prison officer Dan Dobson said in a statement, which was also read to the court, that Hazell had told him: “It’s b*******, they’ve got nothing on me. The loft runs from one end of the street to the other. How come they searched it five times and found nothing?”
The case continues