A MAN went on the run after killing his partner by stabbing her at least 30 times and then knifing their baby girl to death, a court heard.

Anthony Marsh counted to 50 before allegedly murdering Stephanie Bellinger, 24, and their ten-month-old daughter Lili Beau Marsh after claiming he “heard voices in his head” telling him to do it.

Jurors at Winchester Crown Court heard how he carried out the killings with a kitchen knife once the pair were sleeping in his bed at their family home in Myrtle Avenue, Totton, around midnight on February 25 this year.

Stephanie had been “wounded, stabbed or cut repeatedly”

over 30 times to the head, neck, back and chest and had woken screaming when the attack had began and tried to defend herself.

Lili had been stabbed once in the head but also had bruising to her face. Marsh said he had attempted to strangle her, suffocate her and stood on her with both feet.

Marsh, who was 21 at the time, then took a shower before he fled the house in the middle of the night, leaving their two-year-old son locked inside “alive and unharmed”.

Prosecutor Christopher Parker QC told how it was around 30 hours later when Stephanie’s mother Elizabeth Bellinger, and her sister Ruth, found them, adding: “It was a gruesome sight to behold”.

They had gone to the house, worried that they could not reach Stephanie by phone, and seen the little boy through the letterbox who began shouting “nana, nana”.

When they shouted to him and asked him where his mum was, he told them she and Lili were sleeping, jurors heard.

A neighbour then helped them break into the semidetached house, using a hammer to smash a glass pane in the porch door.

The women ran upstairs where they found Stephanie’s partly naked body, with the knife still in her from the final wound Marsh inflicted. Next to her was Lili’s body, covered by a duvet. Marsh’s bloody handprint was on the wall and a book entitled How to Lose a Husband and Gain a Life was lying on the pillow.

The court was told that Marsh has admitted the killings but claims he was suffering from an abnormality that comes from psychosis which “substantially impaired his responsibility”.

Mr Parker said the prosecution accepted “he may well have had an abnormality of mind” but said it was their case that this didn’t cause him to kill that night.

Jurors were told how Marsh and Stephanie had met four years ago when both worked at a hotel in Cadnam. He was 18 and she was 21. They moved in together that August and by September Stephanie was expecting their first child.

More recently, the pair had financial problems, with debts of around £13,000 and Marsh had had his benefits stopped.

Mr Parker described how Marsh was “free of serious drug misuse but he had other pressures. He had a girlfriend to support and a responsibility to look after his baby son.

“He developed a pattern of behaviour that was to repeat itself.”

He told how Marsh began running away from home, sometimes sleeping rough for several days and other times presenting himself at hospital where he would be assessed.

In August 2008 he was found in Weymouth while in January 2009 Marsh failed to return home from work, sparking a police hunt to find him.

That November Marsh was working as assistant manager at the Happy Cheese pub in Ashurst where he stole £2,000 from a safe after breaking in and went to Eastbourne before turning himself in at a hospital.

A month before the killings, Marsh was diagnosed as having a form of bipolar – something Mr Parker told jurors gave him “a convenient label or excuse”. Weeks later he vanished and was found in Bristol. He told hospital staff he felt unwell and “out of control”.

The week before the alleged murders was normal, with the couple’s son starting pre-school, Marsh applying for a cafe job and the family shopping in Asda Totton hours before the killings.

Stephanie phoned her mum before going to bed around 9pm on February 25, Mr Parker said, adding: “From that point on nothing was ever heard or said by Stephanie and Lili again.”

Marsh went on the run and was found in Fareham four days later and arrested.

In police interview he said “that voices had been telling him that he should kill Stephanie”. He said the “voices” also told him to kill his son but he was “able to resist” them.

Marsh, now 22, denies two counts of murder.

Proceeding