AN alleged murder victim pleaded for his life as he was being repeatedly attacked in a Southampton flat, jurors heard today.

In an interview with detectives, Lee Nicholls told how Jamie Dack had begged: “Please leave me be, just leave me alone, let me go please.”

But Nicholls told him that he couldn't as things had gone too far.

“If I let you go, you will go to the Old Bill,” he told police. “He promised me he wouldn't and I said I couldn't take that chance. I said to him, you know what is going to happen and he was, like, yeah.”

Winchester Crown Court heard that Nicholls told police how he had repeatedly struck Jamie about ten times with a baseball bat about the head and face.

“Just kept hitting him and hitting him and hitting him, hoping this would have killed him,” the court heard he had told detectives.

Nicholls said that he stopped and co-defendants Ryan Woodmansey and Andrew Dwyer-Skeats then hit Jamie. Nicholls added that he hit Jamie with a bottle about 30 times until it broke.

He then told detectives how he had stabbed Jamie about eight or nine times in the neck with the two other men goading him: “If you're going to do it properly, don't tickle him.”

That, he said, made him more angry.

Asked what caused him to stop stabbing Jamie, Nicholls replied: “The last stabbing because I knew that was the one that killed him.”

Jamie's body was discovered on Easter Sunday in a burning industrial bin.

Donna Chalk, 21, and Dwyer-Skeats, 26, of Bevois Mews, Nicholls, of Southampton Street and Woodmansey of no fixed address, all deny murder.

The three men admit perverting the course of justice by disposing of and setting fire to Jamie's body. Chalk denies that charge.

Proceeding

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