Gary Allen trial: Murder accused denies washing bloodied clothes

A man accused of murdering two women 21 years apart has denied washing blood-stained clothes after his encounter with one of them.

Gary Allen denies strangling Samantha Class, 29, in Hull in 1997 and Alena Grlakova, 38, in Rotherham in 2018.

Jurors at Sheffield Crown Court were told Mr Allen had sex with Ms Class on the night of 25 October and her body was found on a riverbank the next day.

Mr Allen said he had "expected to get arrested at some stage".

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The jury of seven men and five women heard his DNA was found on Ms Class, a sex worker, after her body was discovered by schoolchildren on the banks of the Humber Estuary in North Ferriby, East Yorkshire.

Traces of her blood were also detected at the scene on Brickyard Lane.

Mr Allen was acquitted in February 2000 of Ms Class's murder, but "significant new evidence" had led to this second trial, the court had previously been told.

Prosecutor Alistair MacDonald said the defendant's flatmate had told the original trial that Mr Allen had cleaned up the flat and taken clothes to a laundrette on 26 October.

Under cross-examination, Mr MacDonald questioned the 47-year-old about why he was "so keen" to wash his clothes, hours after arriving home at about 01:00 GMT, to which Mr Allen replied his flatmate had "made a mistake".

Mr MacDonald put to the defendant: "You went to the laundrette to wash your clothes because you attacked her."

Mr Allen replied: "You can't get blood stains off clothes. That's ridiculous. Have you ever got blood stains off clothes?

"If I had clothes that had Samantha Class's blood on, I'm not going to take them to the laundrette. I'm going to chuck them away."

The court had heard that Mr Allen was convicted for attacking two sex workers in Plymouth in 2000, the year he was cleared of Ms Class's murder.

He disagreed with the prosecutor that those attacks involved strangulation and applying pressure to the victims' necks.

But Mr Allen agreed documents found in his cell in Albany prison related to information about decomposing bodies from a book he read.

However, he denied searching for "murdered females" on the internet and gathering images of naked and semi-naked women, some covered in blood, on a mobile phone.

"I said this in interviews. I didn't recognise any of those photos," said Mr Allen.

When Mr MacDonald asked the defendant why he let out a sigh in the witness box, Mr Allen replied: "I'm sick and tired of this."

The 47-year-old also denied telling probation officers he had "a strong dislike for prostitutes", that he targeted them and wanted to hurt women, and he claimed the officers had lied.

The trial continues.

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