Body in bag trial, day 3: ‘A charmer, but a liar and a cheat’

In a statement read to Bradford Crown Court Alison Doram told how her attraction to Andrew Lindo turned into a sexual affair in 2009 while they were both teaching at the Take 2 Stage School in Barnsley.

It only ended in February last year after she saw on Facebook his Valentine’s Day engagement to partner Marie Stewart, from whom he claimed to be separated.

She then discovered from another colleague, Amy Wilde, that she too had briefly been seeing Lindo for some of that period.

The jury heard Miss Wilde’s relationship had only got as far as kissing and cuddling.

“It transpired we were both seeing Andrew at the same time and he was trying to stop us talking to each other.”

The body of Miss Stewart, 30, was found in the garage at Lindo’s home in Perseverance Place, Holmfirth, on February 13 this year. She had been strangled, battered and stabbed.

Lindo, 29, denies her murder but has admitted her manslaughter in December last year.

The prosecution claim he was an inveterate liar leading a double life planning a future with another woman, Angela Rylance.

Dance teacher Miss Doram said their relationship only became sexual after Lindo told her Miss Stewart had walked out on him and their daughter in the summer of 2009 although she was pregnant.

He said he planned to get custody of the baby.

The following month she spent a night at his home and saw no suggestion of another woman living there such as toiletries.

“I believed I was in a relationship with Andrew exclusively. The more I got to know him the more I fell for him.”

She became suspicious about his relationship with Miss Stewart after seeing some pictures on Facebook but Lindo had explained them away, until in February after he cancelled a date, she looked again on Facebook and found the engagement.

“I was very upset and hurt by what I saw. I cried a lot.” When she confronted Lindo about it he still denied having anything to do with Marie Stewart.

She said he was “a nice person, a charmer, but I also believe he was a liar and a cheat from my experience.”

Music teacher Miss Wilde said in her statement she became good friends with Lindo at work and they began to flirt although she was then married.

It progressed to kissing and cuddling but then fizzled out by mutual agreement.

In February last year after she saw Miss Doram crying she heard about their affair and they both went to Holmfirth to confront Lindo but did not see him.

Debra Lucks told the jury Miss Stewart confided in her last December that she suspected Lindo was seeing someone after getting a text message intended for another woman and found out that was Angela Rylance. “She was devastated.”

When she was told within days that Miss Stewart had left the family home. “I was scared because it wasn’t like her to just leave.”

Miss Stewart’s father Robert said when Lindo told him she needed time away he believed it was because of the affair.

“Andrew is a very plausible actor and managed to convince not just me but a whole series of other people that Marie had initially gone to this caravan and then subsequently that she had gone abroad.”

The trial continues.