Bin man found guilty of murdering Bognor mother

Wayne Morris repeatedly smashed a plastic tray over Ruth Brown’s head after she asked him to move in with her in Collyer Avenue during the first national Coronavirus lockdown.

The tray shattered as he hit the Glaswegian former barmaid at least four times about the head, his trial at Brighton Law Courts heard.

Morris slept off the cider, whisky and cannabis he had taken before moving Ruth Brown’s body upstairs to bed and mopping blood off the kitchen floor.

He bought more alcohol and ordered a takeaway to be delivered.

He told the jury she was ‘out of sight out of mind’.

The court heard Morris say he could not remember attacking his partner of six years a week after moving in to look after her.

She was terrified of catching covid after being diagnosed with COPD.

Morris had been furloughed from his job as a bin man in Bognor Regis, West Sussex and moved in when his partner was on her own.

Ruth Brown was raised in Govan and was described as a petite, firey woman.

She stopped working after an accident at work and took medications for chronic pain.

Her body was not found for four days.

Wayne Morris denied murdering Ruth Brown, 52, despite admitting responsibility for her death – but was found guilty of murder by the jury today.

Asked if he accepted causing her death, Mr Morris said: “I do.

“I assume it was me.

“There was nobody else in the house and it was all locked up.

“It’s something I’ll have to deal with for the rest of my life.”

When he was asked why he killed his partner of six years, he said: “I have no recollection, so I don’t know why.”

The 47-year-old, originally from Cannock in Staffordshire, told the court the couple started drinking heavily while pottering in the garden at her home in Bognor during the heatwave at the start of the first national coronavirus lockdown on April 8 last year.

The situation changed when they moved inside to carry on drinking and smoking cannabis.

Morris carried on drinking heavily after finding her body face down on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood the next morning.

The court heard he put his former partner in bed, mopped the kitchen floor and put the broken plastic tray in a wheelie bin before going out to buy more cider.

He spent the day drinking and smoking on his own.

Asked why he did not dial 999 for an ambulance, Mr Morris said: “I panicked, I was devastated.

“I thought...what have I done.”

Morris spent the next day drinking and smoking cannabis with his daughter Skye, 22, before leaving Bognor on Saturday, April 11.

He sent harrowing text messages to his daughter and Ruth’s daughter Lauren before messaging his brother to say he had killed his partner, the court heard.

Morris was arrested on Sunday morning after spending the night in a tent on the Isle of Wight.

Philip Bennetts QC for the Crown asked him: “When the police ask you what you were doing in the kitchen that night, you say ‘Playing tiddlywinks’ and laugh.”

Mr Morris said: “It was a nervous and sarcastic remark.”

“You were being interviewed about killing a woman you loved,” Mr Bennetts said.

“I was under a lot of stress,” Mr Morris replied.

Morris will be sentenced tomorrow.