Gang slit throat of young Long Eaton victim and dumped him near stream, murder trial told

Four men are on trial for killing Owen Fairclough

Four men who conspired to slit the throat of a 21-year-old Derbyshire man and dump his body near a stream planned to “send him on holiday” in what a prosecutor called “pathetic code,” a trial has heard. A jury of seven women and five men heard how Owen Fairclough’s body was discovered by a gang of young teens with his feet lying in the water in Breaston.

The motive, the prosecution claim, is that the group believed Mr Fairclough, of Long Eaton, was preparing to expose their drug dealing criminality to the police. But all of the men in the dock at Derby Crown Court - Jack Towell, David Oswald, and two men who cannot be named for legal reasons - deny responsibility for the killing.

Peter Joyce KC, opening the 10-week trial, said: “At 7.20pm on Jun 23, 2023, a number of young boys, teenagers, went together to a small, secluded wooded area just off a cycle path close to the Navigation Inn, in Breaston, near Long Eaton, in Derbyshire. There, they found lying with his legs in a stream, the body of a young man.

“They did not know whether he was dead so they called the police. The first emergency services to arrive were paramedics who were taken to the place where they found the body by the boys. Paramedics knew immediately the young man with his feet in the stream was dead.

“He had a massive injury from here to here, across his throat, where his throat had been cut. He had also been stabbed to the front of his body.

“That was the body of a young man called Owen Fairclough who lived with his father in Breedon Road, Long Eaton, and who had been missing since June 22."

Mr Joyce said: "The prosecution's case, in a nutshell, is that on the evening of June 21, 2023, Owen Fairclough had been lured to the area where his body was found, taken to the isolated, secluded, place by Towell and was killed by three of them. All four of the defendants planned the killing in the preceding days and three of them - Towell, Oswald and Man A - carrying it out was the fulfilment of that pact."

The prosecutor said: "The three - Man A, Oswald and Towell - had gone to the area in a taxi and having been dropped off went to the place where the killing was to be done. Towell left Man A and Oswald who were lying in wait.

“The location was not a chance location, the area was known to Man A. By chance, Owen came to the scene in the same taxi used just 15 minutes earlier by three of the killers.

“Towell met Owen when he was dropped off by the same taxi and Towell by now knew where he was going as he had left Oswald and Man A at the killing ground and he took Owen there and the three of them murdered him."

Mr Joyce said: "Towell and Owen Fairclough had been very good friends and they also knew each other's extensive criminal activity and it was thought by one of the others that he wanted to expose that activity. In the days leading up to Owen's murder, Towell became convinced that Owen was going to inform on him and the others whose criminal activity he of course knew about. Towell also owed Owen some money which Owen had been pressing him about for days."

Mr Joyce said around six weeks before Mr Fairclough was killed, the dead man's mother's home was burgled while she was away on holiday. He said "a substantial amount of jewellery and gold" was taken and that Towell had recently started a gold business.

The prosecutor said: "After Owen was found, his father went into Owen's bedroom and found some of the stolen property from the burglary of Owen's own mother's house. Owen had been pressing Towell about the £1,000 he owed him and the prosecution say that was some of the cash Towell had made selling items from the burglary at Owen's own mother's."

Mr Joyce said 10 days before the killing, Towell has received information that Mr Fairclough was planning on going to "the feds (the police)" about his (criminal) activity.

Mr Joyce asked the jury to look at a photograph taken 25 hours before the killing which was recovered by the police as part of their investigation. He said on it was "a large wad of £20 notes, a knife in a sheath and a large quantity of cannabis". He said: "That knife in the sheath has never been recovered and a knife like that would be entirely consistent with the weapon that killed Owen Fairclough. A phone that was used in the area of the killing of Owen Fairclough by Man A at the time of the killing has never been recovered. The prosecution says you can find that significant."

The prosecutor said messages between two of the four men in the dock also recovered by the police spoke of them discussing what the prosecution claim is the killing. He said: "One said 'have we got his boarding pass and are we sending him on holiday on Wednesday?' It was all pathetic coded talk, we say."

The trial of 22-year-old Towell, of Castle Boulevard, Nottingham; Oswald, 31, of Granville Square, Birmingham, Man A, who is 22 and from the Long Eaton area, and Man B, 28, from Nottinghamshire, continues.