The alleged killers of a convicted child murderer discovered his true identity just hours before they lured him to his death, a court has heard.
David Osborne, 51, Ieuan Harley, 23, and Darran Evesham, 47, learned David Gaut had served more than 32 years in prison for murdering toddler Chi Ming Shek in 1985.
Prosecutors allege Gaut was stabbed more than 150 times in a “brutal and gratuitously violent” attack after being lured to his next-door neighbour Osborne’s flat by the three defendants.
After his death, his fingernails were also cut off and the three men then dragged his body back to his flat where it was found two days later by police, Newport Crown Court heard.
Osborne’s neighbour Kyle Alford told the court that hours before Gaut’s death, he and his partner Samantha Jenkins discovered he was a convicted child killer.
They had read on the Black Kalendar website, which lists British murders, that Gaut had been responsible for the death of the 15-month-old.
The pair then told other residents at the block of flats in Long Row, New Tredegar, Caerphilly, South Wales, what they had discovered.
Alford and Jenkins went to see Osborne, known as Ozzy, and told him and Harley what they had found out.
“Ozzy was drunk and Ieuan looked a bit worse for wear. He told me he had been up on amphetamine for two or three days. He looked just like he normally would, a bit more on edge,” he said.
“He (Harley) was fuming, we all were really. He was very, very angry. He seemed in control.”
Alford recalled Harley’s alleged reaction.
“He was really shocked and angry when I showed him the phone, calling him things like ‘dirty f*****’ and ‘It wasn’t even a child, it was a baby’,” he said.
“Ozzy was saying that Ieuan wanted to cut him up and put him down the plughole.”
Asked what Osborne was saying, Alford replied: “I don’t think Ozzy was saying anything. He wasn’t believing it for a start.”
A short time later Alford sent a text message to Osborne, saying: “Don’t let Dai know we all know he’s a baby killer. Catch the FK. N out. Dirty nonce c***. WA”
A few minutes later, Osborne replied with: “Okay, bro.”
The jury heard that Alford and Jenkins carried out further Google searches about Gaut and the following day Jenkins telephoned the local council.
Asked to explain why, Alford replied: “Sam has children of her own and there was a child murderer living near us and we wanted him away from us.”
Alford recalled one conversation he had with Gaut before he died.
“Just the once when me and my partner were ordering a Chinese takeaway and he said he didn’t like Chinese but would have a Chi Ming Shek,” he told jurors.
“That was the name of the baby that had been murdered.”
Ben Douglas-Jones QC, prosecuting, replied: “In other words he was making a joke in relation of ordering a Chinese takeaway, in very poor taste?”
Alford said: “Yes.”
On 4 August, Harley came to Alford’s flat and they chatted about Gaut.
He told the court: “He said, ‘Don’t worry about him, you won’t see him again’.
“I thought he just meant he had beaten him up and had been moved away from this area, like he had been from two previous areas.”
Earlier, Alford had told the court that Gaut had moved into the flat in Long Row just six weeks before he died.
“He was OK, just friendly,” Alford said.
“Straight away, from the first time we met... that he had been released from prison. He said he had killed a soldier.”
Under cross-examination, Alford accepted he was a drug user who was using cannabis, methadone, heroin, benzodiazepine and valium at the time of Gaut’s death.
Osborne, from Long Row, Elliots Town, New Tredegar; Harley, of no fixed address; and Evesham, from Powell’s Terrace, New Tredegar, all deny the murder of Gaut between 1 and 4 August last year.
Harley and Evesham also deny a charge of perverting the course of justice, which Osborne admits.
The trial continues.