Teacher ‘toasted best Christmas ever, days after killing fiancée’

Angela Rylance told Bradford Crown Court yesterday she had no idea at the time she was at Andrew Lindo’s home on Christmas Day and Boxing Day last year that the body of Marie Stewart was in his garage.

She had only started a relationship with Lindo a few months earlier after he told her Miss Stewart had left him.

Lindo, 29, has admitted the manslaughter of Miss Stewart, 30, at their home in Perseverance Place, Holmfirth but denies murdering her. The prosecution claims he strangled, battered and stabbed her on December 18 after leading a double life telling Miss Rylance he planned to marry her.

Lindo disputes that was the night of Miss Stewart’s death and told police he lost control and killed her to protect their daughter from mistreatment.

Miss Rylance told the jury she first met Lindo when they flirted as he cashed a cheque at the Money Shop in Barnsley where she worked.

She was attracted to him and messaged him on Facebook. They began texting and eventually arranged to meet after he told her he was a single parent.

But before they did she became suspicious about his relationship with Miss Stewart after seeing a picture on her Facebook profile looking happy with Lindo.

She said she told Lindo she did not want to get involved if he was in a relationship but he kept reassuring her Miss Stewart had left him two weeks after the birth of their son earlier in 2010.

“He said she wasn’t normal, he referred to her being crazy,” she told the court

Miss Rylance said she was wary but her relationship with Lindo developed and became sexual. “He told me I was amazing, I was beautiful.”

On December 10 she had a phone call from a woman saying he was still with Miss Stewart but when she challenged Lindo about that he again stuck to his story and said she was trying to split them up.

Miss Rylance said in text messages he called her his future wife and she believed him. He took her to Perseverance Place but she only spent the night there for the first time on August 18, which had been planned in advance.

That evening he was very late collecting her with his children. At his home she helped him make up his bed because he said he had taken the bedding off to wash it, the prosecution claim that was where he had first attacked his fiancée only hours earlier.

She told the jury Lindo was very affectionate. “We didn’t have sex. We just cuddled all night. He said he’d never hurt me.”

On Christmas Day she got to his home about 3pm and stayed until Boxing Day. Lindo told her Marie Stewart had sent no presents for the children and he understood she had gone abroad.

“We had a toast to us, he said what a fantastic Christmas it has been – the best ever.”

Under cross-examination by Robert Smith QC defending Lindo she agreed she had seen him in tears on the night of December 18 as they were cuddling in the bedroom.

Re-examined by Michelle Colborne QC, she said he had a tear on his face but she believed it was because she had thought she might be pregnant and had started to bleed. “He kept saying, ‘my poor baby’.”

The trial continues.