Mum says accused controlled daughter
THE mother of a woman allegedly stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend told a murder trial how he had controlled her daughter.
Jason Cooper, 28, is alleged to have lain in wait for his former partner Laura Stuart before launching a brutal knife attack.
He denies murdering the 33-yearold mum of two in Love Lane in Denbigh in the early hours of August 12 last year and is on trial at Mold Crown Court.
Yesterday Ms Stuart’s mother, Elizabeth Griffiths, told the court Cooper had been controlling towards her daughter.
She told the jury he would put her thumb on her phone when she was asleep in order to open it so that he could look at her messages.
Her daughter received messages from Cooper after they split and they got worse when he realised she was not going back to him.
She added: “He didn’t like her having friends never mind relationships with men.”
Mrs Griffiths confirmed there had been allegations Cooper had assaulted her daughter outside the RAF club in Denbigh when she suffered injuries to her thigh and shoulder. But she did not press charges.
On another occasion he threw a plate of dinner which hit Ms Stuart causing a cut which bled. That, she said, occurred about six weeks before she died.
Cooper sent messages to his former partner pleading with her to go back to him, saying “I love you, I love you”, the court heard.
Mrs Griffiths said her daughter would call her and leave the phone on so that she could hear the arguments.
On one occasion she went around to their home because he was so aggressive, she said.
Prosecution witness Stuart Olding, a family friend, told how he had seen a message which Cooper had sent to Ms Stuart – a photograph of a silver steel knife on the kitchen floor.
The message read “this is what you have driven me to”.
Mr Olding said it was serious and told her she should seek police protection but Ms Stuart told him she had been to the police and they had said Cooper did not have a case to answer.
The trial, before Mr Justice Simon Picken, continues.