Ashley Crowder Trial Hears Claims of Beating, Strangulation and Benefit Exploitation

Overview

• Jurors heard that Graham Cox told a local support center and then police he was locked in the flat for two weeks until his benefits arrived, then escaped while the defendant slept.
• Banking records show £1,193.48 in benefits paid in February 2024 and £1,193 withdrawn in cash, with calls where another man appeared to direct Cox in a menacing tone.
• Police found Cox on March 5, 2024 lying on a sofa under a blanket in Ashley Crowder’s Barton Walk flat, and Crowder told officers he had fallen and suffered a brain bleed.
• The prosecution said Crowder had told an addiction worker on March 4 that his friend had died, which they argue contradicts his later account to police.
• A Home Office pathologist cited fatal injuries from sustained blunt force assault, prosecutors also pointed to fractures in Cox’s neck, and Crowder denies murder, manslaughter, assault and theft.