Music teacher ‘cuddled lover all night with partner’s body in garage’

Angela Rylance told Bradford Crown Court how she started a relationship with Andrew Lindo, 29, who told her how the mother of his two young children - Marie Stewart - had left him and was “mental”.

Lindo has admitted the manslaughter of Miss Stewart but denies murdering her.

The jury has heard how Lindo told police he strangled, battered and stabbed Miss Stewart before storing her body in a bag in his garage.

Prosecutors say this happened on December 18 last year but he denies it happened on this date.

Today, Ms Rylance was asked about the night of December 18 by Michelle Colborne QC, prosecuting.

Giving evidence from the witness box, she described how the defendant picked her up in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, with his young son and daughter in the car and they drove back to his house in Perseverance Place, Holmfirth.

After the children went to bed, she said Lindo was “very affectionate”.

Ms Rylance said: “He told me how much he loved me.”

She said they went to bed after putting on new bed clothes.

Ms Rylance told the jury: “We didn’t have sex. We just cuddled all night. He said he’d never hurt me.”

Earlier, Ms Rylance explained how she began a relationship with Lindo after he met her in a money shop in Barnsley where she worked as a cashier in August last year.

She said she soon became suspicious about the defendant’s claim to be a single father when she accessed Miss Stewart’s Facebook profile.

But, she said, Lindo kept reassuring her they were no longer together and Miss Stewart had left their children with him.

She said she got a call from a woman called Karen who warned her Lindo and Miss Stewart were still together but Lindo continued to stick to his story, she said.

Ms Rylance said Lindo told her: “She’d do anything to split us up.”

She added: “He said she was mental.”

Ms Rylance, who has two children, said their relationship developed and became sexual.

She said: “He told me I was amazing - I was beautiful.

“I actually believed him and thought we would get married.”

She said he would leave Facebook messages saying “love you future wife”.

The court has heard how Miss Stewart’s body remained in the garage at Perservance Place until it was found by police on February 13 this year.