Thomas Nutt hid wife's body in cupboard with potatoes, court hears

Thomas Nutt, who said he was fifteen and a half stone, told the police he took the Christmas lights out of the cupboard before putting Dawn Walker inside.

Miss Walker was about five feet tall and very light, he stated.

Nutt, 45, of Shirley Grove, Lightcliffe, denies murdering Miss Walker, 52. He has pleaded guilty to her manslaughter, Bradford Crown Court has been told.

He said the couple arrived back from their honeymoon late on the night before Halloween after marrying on October 27 last year.

Miss Walker ‘flipped’ and was screaming at him saying she wanted a divorce.

She came running at him and he had spun her round and put his arm around her neck in a headlock. He didn’t realise he was choking her.

“It seemed so fast, before I knew it she was laid out on the floor.”

Her body went light and he dropped her, he said.

She gave a couple of gasps: “There was no life, no pulse, no nothing.”

When her body went limp and there was no pulse, he put her in a cupboard because he didn’t know what to do. He was panicking that he had killed the person he had married a few days before.

He said there was a big bag of potatoes in the cupboard and he put Miss Walker on top of it after taking out the Christmas lights.

“I didn’t mean to kill her, I really didn’t, I just wanted her to stop screaming,” he said.

He didn’t call an ambulance because she had already gone: ‘There was nothing I could do.’

The next day when Miss Walker was missing, Nutt said he realised the house would be searched so he ran upstairs for a wheeled suitcase and put Miss Walker in it. She was going stiff and he may have broken her legs in the process.

He zipped it up but the handle snapped off so he used the cloth handle to drag it down the garden. He then physically ‘chucked’ it over the fence.

Nutt said he was being videoed by a householder when he was pulling the case before putting it in some bushes.

Earlier, his former partner Kimberley Allcock said she was with him for ten years and they had three children together.

In the first two years he was fine, never violent or aggressive, but in 2007 he attacked her after a dispute over a child’s name.

Miss Allcock said: “He went mad and punched me in the head constantly. I was on the floor begging him to stop.”

She was covered in blood and bruised after he struck her repeatedly in the face with his fist. He locked her in the house afterwards and took her phone so she couldn’t call the police.

Miss Allcock told the jury Nutt became ‘a Jekyll and Hyde character’ - he could be very loving and pleasant, but when he lost his temper he would go mad.

She said he repeatedly asked her to marry him but she refused. She felt like a prisoner and couldn’t get away.

One night in February 2015, he began to swear and shout at her. He grabbed her forcibly round the throat and sat on her chest.

“I began to panic because I thought he was going to kill me,” she said.

He grabbed her throat again and punched her in the head about eight or nine times with his clenched fist.

“I dropped to the floor. He was just continuously punching me again,” she said.

Nutt was charged with common assault. He pleaded not guilty but was convicted.

Miss Allcock got a restraining order preventing him from coming to her house.

In July 2020, Miss Walker contacted her to ask why the order was in place. Nutt had told her that Miss Allcock had cheated on him and lied to the police.

Miss Allcock said she informed Miss Walker that Nutt had beaten her up and been found guilty of assaulting her.

Miss Walker told her Nutt ‘scared the hell out of her'.

The trial continues.

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