In graphic testimony, an accused accomplice to murder told jurors he had decapitated and hacked to pieces the body of a man allegedly killed by his nephew in order to protect his younger relative.
Gerard McGlacken, 45, told a trial at Manchester Crown Court that he’d seen his nephew Aaron Evitt, 33 – who he also has called “cousin,” so the relationship is not clear — hit his friend Ashley Walsh “very hard” to the head with a hammer following a night of drinking together.
Walsh was brutally killed as a result of multiple injuries. McGlacken admits that Walshe’s body was then “chopped up.” His dismembered body parts were later found in four separate suitcases in a park. Both men deny murdering Walsh but have both already pleaded guilty to the prevention of a lawful burial – they are now, however, on trial for his murder.
McGlacken told jurors from the witness stand that the men had met during the afternoon and gone back to McGlacken’s flat on Kintore Walk, where they had a few cans of lager. He said the three of them went to a nearby shop to get some more alcohol, along with Walsh’s beloved dog, Duke, before returning to the flat.
McGlacken said the trio were all “buzzing” and having a “really good time,” during which they played with Duke and took pictures together. However, the mood changed when Evitt and Walsh got into some kind of altercation in the kitchen. McGlacken told rivetted jurors that he didn’t initially know what the argument was about but was later told by Evitt that Walsh had allegedly slept with Evitt’s ex-girlfriend. “They were pushing and shoving each other, and Ashley [Walsh] tried to leave the flat,” McGlacken said.
“He was saying ‘just let me go, let me go,’ Aaron [Evitt] wouldn’t let him go; he wanted answers off him, he wanted the truth off him. Aaron started trying to stop him from going past him.”
Walsh managed to leave the flat, followed by Evitt and McGlacken, who persuaded them both to come back inside to “sort things out.” He said he had concerns that the police would come round due to the noise and that he would be evicted.
Once back inside the flat, McGlacken said he wanted Evitt and Walsh to talk about what was going on, but he said they just started fighting again. “I tried to stand in between them and told them to calm down, but I got pushed and fell down,” he said.
McGlacken continued with his shocking testimony. “The next thing I recall is seeing Ashley laying on the floor. I saw Aaron strike Ashley with a hammer on his head. He was pretty angry, and hit him very hard.”
McGlacken told jurors that Walsh put his hands up to defend himself during the hammer attack. He said Walsh was eventually “knocked out” on the floor and wasn’t moving. McGlacken then checked his pulse and found there was no heartbeat and said to Evitt, “what have you fucking done, you fucking shithead,” he told the court.
Hours later, Evitt received a video call from a friend, and he told the caller that he had done something “really bad,” before turning the camera around and showing them where Walsh’s body lay bleeding. When asked what happened next, McGlacken said the friend thought Walsh’s body was just a “mannequin,” so Evitt then stabbed him to the chest a number of times, to show the friend it was real!
Eventually, Evitt had fallen asleep on the sofa, and McGlacken then proceeded to “cut the body up,” as he put it to the jurors. When asked by his barrister, Imran Shafi QC, why he dismembered the body, he said, “To dispose of it. I needed to get rid of it to protect my nephew.”
He said he used a samurai sword – which he had in his house as an ornament – other kitchen knives, a hammer, and an electric saw. Of the remains, he said he put them in different bags and put them on the landing whilst he cleaned up the scene.
McGlacken, who admits to being a “functioning alcoholic,” said he was drinking during this before he “blacked out” and fell asleep. When Evitt had awoken the next morning, McGlacken said he told him that he (Evitt) had killed Walsh, and he McGlacken had “chopped his body up.”
Over the next few days, both McGlacken and Evitt cleaned the flat and began moving the remains into four suitcases, the court heard. McGlacken said they both first took one smaller suitcase each on their bike to a local park, where they hid them under some branches and leaves.
They then went back to his flat and took the bigger suitcases to the same spot, he said. Of Duke, Walsh’s dog, he said they were both thinking about what they were going to do about him.
He said they first took him for a walk before letting him go nearby, but he returned back to McGlacken’s flat. They then looked after him for a couple of days before taking him to Boggart Hole Clough, where they tried to block off a section of the park, but he kept getting away. They then tied him up in another section of the park before leaving him, he said.
McGlacken admitted lying to the police during his police interviews, where he claimed he didn’t know what happened to Walsh as he wanted to protect Evitt “out of love.”
Yet, despite his graphic testimony, both Evitt and McGlacken deny murder.
What a horrible thing to have happened. I hope both of these men are made to pay for what they did to that poor woman. Having said that, I will say this: I absolutely detest reading stories where the facts are muddled. The writer of this article, Mr. Strong, keeps calling Ashley Walsh a “him” when the name implies a woman and the title explicitly says it’s a woman who has been decapitated and dismembered. The article is confusing and very poorly written. I sure do miss the days when children were taught the basics in school and knew how to write a sentence clearly so that when they later become a journalist they can write an article that is not distracting from the content itself.