This week the prosecution barrister has been outlining the often shocking details of Simmerson's alleged crime and there has been drama in the packed court as witnesses admitted lying on oath and to the police.

On 7th June Simmerson and his girlfriend Julie Turner travelled to Leeds on one of their regular shopping trips to the exclusive Harvey Nichols store.

During their four-year affair, Simmerson had lavished nearly £180,000 worth of presents on his lover and they were so used to the expensive outings that staff at Harvey Nichols knew them by name.

But Julie would never return to her own home, because at some point in the journey she was killed by a bullet that 'completely traversed her brain'.

Whether that was because Howard Simmerson shot her deliberately, or whether her death came about because the pair had struggled when she pulled the gun on him is currently being argued over in court.

But the gruesome details of what happened after that have been presented to the jury as Simmerson sealed her dead body into an oil drum and drove around with it on the back of his pick-up truck for the next 40 hours.

He then allegedly sent text messages to Miss Turner's partner and to his own mobile phone in an apparent attempt to convince people she was still alive and to give himself an alibi.

"Among the evidence I will give you is the availability of the gun to Simmerson, the speed with which he disposed of her body, the fact that he sent text messages to her partner and to his own phone pretending to be from her. He had sex with another girlfriend within 12 hours of her death and drove around Derbyshire with her in an oil drum for 40 hours."

He was a single man and in 2001 he started a secret affair with the already 'spoken for' Julie Turner, but it wasn't long before Miss Turner's long-time partner, Darren Akers, found out.

He found the pair kissing in a car and realised his common-law wife was straying, but after initial 'to-ings and fro-ings' Miss Turner continued to live with Mr Akers and would, with his full knowledge, go out with Simmerson a couple of times a week.

Police evidence suggests he was spending thousands of pounds per month on his lover, the most expensive month being March of 2004 when he splashed out £12,000.

The night she disappeared had been another of these extravagant shopping trips – shop assistants who saw the pair in Harvey Nichols noticed they were in 'high sprits'.

After shopping, the couple are seen in the footage to return to Simmerson's blue Mercedes, which was parked outside Costa Coffee on Albion Place in Leeds city centre.

Within days of the shooting, the court heard the Mercedes had been professionally cleaned but even after that not all of the blood had been removed from the car.

Mr Kelson said there was evidence to show Miss Turner had been shot in the car, but not to show exactly where the car had been when the incident happened.

Blood was also found on the floor of the garage in the defendant's home and DNA profiling has since revealed that in both cases the blood was indeed that of Julie Turner.

"It took him only 50 minutes to come to the decision to do all this and that may help with the issue of to what extent the death of Julie Turner was planned," said Mr Kelson.

Shortly after midnight on the night of Miss Turner's death, Simmerson drove the Ranger to Chesterfield and then on to Bakewell, where he sent a text message to Darren Akers, the contents of which, Mr Kelson said, were 'chilling in the extreme'.

"She was in an oil drum a few feet behind him with a bullet in her brain when Simmerson sent the message: 'Stopping at Jill's, back later. Need to sort my head out'."

He then rang a Derbyshire farmer friend of his called Christopher Melland and asked if he could use one of his caravans for the night as he had 'had some hassle'. The request was refused.

Simmerson then used one of Miss Turner's mobile phones to send a text to his own mobile which read: "Sucker. I'm stopping at my friend's – guess who?"

The next morning Simmerson headed back to the Melland's farm and had sex with the farmer's 20-year-old ginger-haired daughter, Charlotte, in her father's shed.

Although the court heard Charlotte had 'made herself available' to Simmerson in the past, he had refused to sleep with her while he was still with Miss Turner.

Simmerson told one of his employees to take the car there and said that because he was going to drive up the bypass he did not want the empty drum 'rattling about' in the back of his Ranger.

They also found the gun that had killed Miss Turner – an Italian-made Derringer double-barrelled handgun that had been modified from only being able to fire blanks to the real thing.

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