A MURDER trial jury has heard about the Press coverage of the killing of law student Janet Murgatroyd.

The battered and naked body of the daughter of a former Chorley FC chairman was found floating in the River Ribble hours after she vanished on her way home after a night out.

For three years her assailant was unknown but Andrew Greenwood then approached police and confessed.

He has since retracted his confession and claimed that he talked himself into believing he had committed the murder as a combination of his mental state and his development of a morbid interest in the crime.

Liverpool Crown Court has heard that Greenwood, 29, claims he based his confession on what he had read and remembered from newspapers and see on a re-enactment on BBC1 Crimewatch programme.

But Paul Reid QC, prosecuting, said that in his police interviews Greenwood displayed a much more extensive knowledge of the murder than would be expected from someone who happened to read newspaper reports or viewed Crimewatch three years earlier.

Greenwood, of Sephton Street, Lostock Hall, has pleaded not guilty to murdering 20-year-old Janet on June 16, 1996.

Detective Superintendent Ian Kennedy, who was in charge of the investigation in 1999, said that the initial inquiry when the murder happened had been wide ranging.

Questioned by Mr Reid, he went through a file of press cuttings about the murder hunt identifying the details released to the public.

Retired Detective Superintendent Graham Gooch, who had been in charge in 1996, denied a suggestion by Andrew Edis QC, defending, that the police had trawled around to find a pathologist to support the truthfulness of Greenwood's confession rather than just being consistent with it.

(Proceeding)