The defendant in a murder trial has been describing the time leading up to the discovery of a body in his house at Queen Street in Castletown in December 2013.
Under cross-examination from Linda Watts, 46-year-old Ian Anderson denied he had planned to get rid of 60-year-old gardener Neil Roberts ‘once and for all’.
Asked why he had gone out to help Mr Roberts on the night he died, then gone to the pub with him, despite saying he wanted nothing to do with him, Mr Anderson said: ‘I’m a compassionate person.’ Later he told the court: ‘I wanted to help him because he had looked after Bentley (the Andersons’ French bulldog) for three days.’
But Mr Anderson said matters got out of hand when he later asked Mr Roberts to leave his house: ‘I didn’t call the police because I thought he would go. I didn’t expect him to get angry or confrontational. I threatened to call the police and I could see his body language change.’
Referring to Mr Roberts’ extensive injuries, Mrs Watts asked: ‘It was you who inflicted those catastrophic injuries wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mr Anderson replied. ‘The person who I am would not have continued to do that. I stopped being me because of the prolonged, persistent, physically violent assault on me. I don’t know who I became.’
Mrs Watts said: ‘You became the person who murdered Neil Roberts, didn’t you?’
‘I did not murder Neil Roberts,’ he replied.
Mr Anderson denies murder. The case continues.