‘Alleged killer regularly attacked his victim’ court told

Jun 11 2008 by Chloe Griffiths, Liverpool Daily Post

Daniel Breaks (200)

THE mother of a man who was beaten to death and dumped in an alley yesterday told how she feared her son’s alleged killer.

Christine Sutton told a jury her son Simon would often come to her Bromborough home battered and bruised.

She said her eight-stone son, who suffered from a stammer, was regularly attacked by his alleged killer Daniel Breaks – the brother of Mr Sutton’s girlfriend Gwyneth Breaks – in the year running up to his death.

Breaks is accused of murdering Mr Sutton, 40, over accusations he had “grassed” on his plot to blackmail a bank.

A jury at Liverpool Crown Court have heard the 48-year-old, of Hallville Road, Mossley Hill, hit, kicked and stamped on frail Mr Sutton and beat him with a weighted pool cue, until he fell unconscious. He then ordered his sister’s two teenage sons to kick and stamp on his dying body, as well as slap their own mother.

Breaks, who was electronically-tagged at the time, is alleged to have showed the body off to relatives, before getting his sister and her sons to dispose of the body in an alleyway close to her house in Argyle Street South, Birkenhead. It was found days later, on April 16 last year.

Yesterday Mrs Sutton told the jury she had always been scared of Breaks and said she refused to speak to him.

She added: “Simon would come to mine with black eyes sometimes he would have bruised arms and ribs.

“He would hold his ribs and be in pain and he would say Daniel had punched him.”

Tim Holroyde QC, prosecuting, told the jury this related to information Mr Sutton knew about Breaks’s attempts to blackmail HSBC Bank of £300,000 by claiming he had taken an employee hostage.

It is alleged Breaks launched his fatal attack on April 10 as he believed Mr Sutton had “grassed” to the police.

Breaks denies murder, blackmail, two counts of false imprisonment and two counts of kidnapping. Jason Sutton, 27, of Rockville Street, Birkenhead, denies blackmail.

The case continues.