A MAN battered his lover's seven-year-old son with a hammer, stabbed him five times with a kitchen knife then strangled him, a murder trial was told.

Former Blackburn man Ronald Mariner, 23, then used a wheelie bin to carry the body of schoolboy Ryan Mason to a Bolton golf course where he dumped him, it is claimed.

Unemployed Mariner, of Bowland Drive, Johnson Fold, Bolton, denies killing Ryan in the living room of his mother Lynn Mason's house in Hawker Avenue, Great Lever, last February.

Mariner is from a large Blackburn family and lived in the Shadsworth area of town for many years.

The court was told he later accused Ryan's 43-year-old mother Lynn Mason, his lover, of the murder.

He claimed he only helped her to dispose of the the body, a jury of eight women and four men were told at Manchester Crown Court.

Alan Conrad QC, prosecuting, said Ryan, a "lively, sometimes boisterous boy," was hit over the head with a hammer.

He was stabbed five times and then strangled.

The court was told Mariner told a series of lies about Ryan's whereabouts after his disappearance before blaming his lover Mrs Mason for the murder.

Mr Conrad said: "We say that is the final and most monstrous lie made by Mariner in a desperate attempt to avoid the consequences of his actions."

But Sue Klonin, defending, told the murder trial that Mrs Mason stabbed Ryan in "a flash of rage" after he had accidentally knocked over a glass of cider she was drinking.

The murder trial was told Mariner's fingerprints were discovered on a hammer in an upstairs bedroom of the house and on a large knife in a kitchen cupboard. The prosecution alleged he stayed overnight at Mrs Mason's home on the night of the murder, a day after Mrs Mason's 43rd birthday.

Ryan's body was discovered two days later, wrapped in a bin bag and submerged in boggy land on the fourth fairway at Farnworth and Great Lever Golf Course.

Mariner had earlier been seen pushing a wheelie bin across the course, the court heard.

And Mr Conrad QC said evidence later recovered from the bin linked it with Mrs Mason's home.

(Proceeding)