A MAN stabbed his gay lover through the heart and left his body to rot in a flat for three weeks, a jury has heard.

David Fielding, 25, and James Todd, 27, had been living together in Rutland Close, Clayton-le-Moors, for around three months, but had fallen out and were about to split up, Preston Sessions House was told.

Dennis Watson QC, opening the prosecution’s case, said that Fielding had murdered Mr Todd with a kitchen knife after they had been drinking on the evening of Sunday, September 5 at The Albion pub.

He said Fielding returned to the flat almost two-and-a-half weeks later to collect some of his belongings, but did not report the body.

It was only on September 27, three weeks after his death, that Mr Todd’s ‘unrecognisable’ decomposed body was discovered when the landlord responded to neighbours’ complaints about the smell coming from the flat.

Mr Watson said Mr Todd, a chef at Sparth House, Whalley Road, was found by the side of the bed and could only be recognised by his fingerprints.

Fielding, of Lynthorpe Road, Blackburn, is said by the prosecution to have covered the body with a duvet and made attempts to clean up the bloodstained floor with a mop, bucket and kitchen cloth, before fleeing the area early the next morning with Mr Todd’s mobile phone and bank card.

He was caught on CCTV and traced by mobile phone cell-siting going from Blackburn to Preston, Preston to London and on to Dover, then Folkestone, Kent, where he stayed with a cousin for four days, who described him as ‘a mess, dirty and scruffy’ when he arrived.

The court heard that when Mr Todd did not turn up to work on Monday, September 6, staff from Sparth House went to his flat but could not get an answer.

Fielding later called the hotel to say Mr Todd had ‘gone on a bender’, but they remained suspicious as the days passed as the well-liked chef hadn’t collected his £460 wages.

The jury was told after Fielding had travelled south, he returned north via the Midlands, Manchester, and the Lake District.

Mr Watson QC said that on September 23, he asked a friend to take him to the flat in Rutland Close to pick up some things he was moving back to his parents’ house in Lynthorpe Road, Blackburn.

Fielding went in alone and brought out a holdall and a computer tower which, according to the friend, ‘absolutely stank’ to the point where he had to drive with the windows open and get his car cleaned.

Mr Watson said: “I’m afraid to say that was the smell of Mr Todd’s rotting body – there’s no other way around it.”

Then, on September 27, the jury was told, Hyndburn Homes sent out a member of staff to address complaints from neighbours in Rutland Close about a smell coming from the flat.

Fielding was on file as Mr Todd’s emergency contact and he took a call asking him to let the employee into the flat.

He rang back to say he did not have the keys and was no longer living there.

Police arrested Fielding on September 28. He gave a series of no comment interviews to detectives.

Mr Watson told the jury Fielding had remarked to a cell-mate that he had been arrested for ‘fighting - but there’s a bit more to it’.

Mr Watson said the defence statement says the couple had argued after coming home, Todd punched Fielding, but the defendant has no recollection of a knife.

He said Fielding was ‘silent on the details of what happened that night’.

The court heard that neighbours had also seen the couple fighting at the flat in the months before and staff at Mr Todd’s work had noticed a wound on his shoulder.

During one row, a resident had overhead Mr Todd say to Fielding: “You can put the knife down now.”

Mr Watson said: “We cannot say the precise detail of the argument on September 5.

"But the end of the relationship may well have been the motive for the defendant to attack James Todd.

“He told a series of lies about Mr Todd and his whereabouts.

“The use of his bank card and phone was in the sure and certain knowledge that he would not complain because James Todd was dead in the flat.”

A post mortem examination by pathologist Dr Charles Wilson stated the fatal blow was a single stab wound, six inches deep, to the heart administered with at least ‘moderate’ force, likely to have been while Mr Todd was standing due to blood drops on his shoes.

Footprints found in smeared blood at the scene matched the shoe pattern of the trainers Fielding was wearing on arrest.

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