Nottingham man admits murdering Long Eaton 21-year-old whose throat was slit

A Nottingham man has admitted murdering a 21-year-old whose throat was slit and dumped in a stream near Long Eaton. Jack Towell changed his previous not guilty plea to guilty partway through a trial at Derby Crown Court.

The 22-year-old killer, of Castle Boulevard, was one of four men accused of murdering Owen Fairclough whose body was discovered by a gang of teens lying in the water in Breaston.

The others - David Oswald, and two men who cannot be named for legal reasons - deny responsibility for the killing, and the trial is continuing.

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.

Peter Joyce KC, when he opened the 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."

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."

The trial of Oswald, 31, of Granville Square, Birmingham, Man A, who is 22 and from the Long Eaton area, and Man B, 28, from Nottinghamshire, continues.