A man on trial for the murder of a Ryanair cabin steward found buried under a shed in Ellesmere Port claims he was ‘a puppet’ following orders.
French native Sebastian Bendou, 36, told a Chester Crown Court jury he was ‘naive’ and acting on the instructions of his friend Dominik Kocher, who has already been found guilty of Christophe Borgye’s 2009 murder.
Bendou, who lived with Borgye and another friend Manuel Wagner, who has been acquitted of assisting Kocher and preventing the lawful and decent burial of a dead body at an earlier trial, denies murder but admits manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to mental illness.
Mr Borgye, 36, died after being hit over the head with a clawhammer between eight to 10 times at his home in Hylton Court, Ellesmere Port on April 23, 2009.
His body was discovered wrapped in a duvet cover and tarpaulin, entombed in a cement structure inside the property’s outhouse on May 13 last year.
Speaking through a translator, Bendou, who has been residing in a secure psychiatric unit in Merseyside, described a life controlled by Kocher who he ‘trusted’ and said was ‘like a brother’ to him.
He had encouraged Bendou to leave France at the age of 28 and work in Liverpool, where he ended up sharing a house with Kocher, his wife and children and Wagner.
He worked 60-70 hours a week doing various jobs but, along with Wagner, always paid his entire wages into Kocher’s bank account.
When John McDermott, prosecuting, asked why he gave all his money to Kocher, who did not work, Bendou said: “I trusted him, he was bringing me food on plates, clean clothes and I had music to listen to. I never had money for myself but I didn’t need any.”
In August 2006 Mr Borgye moved into the house in Liverpool and shortly afterwards, Kocher told Bendou their new roommate was a secret agent working for the French Government who was planning to deport them back to France.
He claimed to have a lawyer in France he spoke to regularly, who told him the US Security Service would protect them and transfer him, his family, Bendou and Wagner to the USA.
In 2007, the group moved to Ellesmere Port where Bendou, who worked as a kitchen porter at the Holiday Inn, lived in three different properties with Wagner and Mr Borgye, who paid the majority of the rent while Kocher still controlled the other men’s money and lifestyles.
A year later he found them a house in Hylton Court where he and his family lived across the road, but was still telling Bendou that Mr Borgye was a spy.
Despite Bendou describing Mr Borgye as ‘polite, kind’ and ‘someone I liked and got on well with’, he told the court: “I believed what (Kocher) said. I was naive. I trusted him as he was like a brother to me. But I was a puppet, an instrument.”
In early 2009, Kocher told Bendou he’d received information from ‘someone higher up’ than he, that Mr Borgye was going to rape his daughter, and that he needed to be ‘eliminated’.
Bendou told the jury: “I told him twice not to do it and said I didn’t want to do it but he told me I had better do it because ‘I am watching you’.”
As Kocher began buying materials to prepare for the killing and build the ‘tomb’, Mr McDermott asked Bendou why he didn’t warn Mr Borgye he was going to be killed.
“I don’t know, I was indoctrinated,” he said.
Recalling the events of the murder, on April 23, 2009, Bendou said the men laid tarpaulin on the kitchen floor and called Mr Borgye into the room.
He said Kocher allowed Wagner to strike the first blows with a clawhammer then Kocher stabbed Mr Borgye so forcefully in the neck that the knife broke, before Bendou struck him three final times across the head.
He then helped his friends transport the dead body into the ready-made tomb after the others had wrapped it in the tarpaulin.
When Mr Borgye was reported missing a month later, they told police he had gone travelling, taking only his address book.
Bendou and Wagner continued living at the house until 2012, when they followed Kocher to Warrington and then Scotland.
There he became paranoid that Kocher and Wagner wanted to ‘eliminate’ him and said his conscience was telling him to hand himself in.
On May 13 last year he phoned police and told them he was responsible for Mr Borgye’s death, showing them where the body was hidden later that day.
“I don’t know what I was thinking at the time,” he said. “I was naive, totally manipulated and used as an instrument.
“If it had been me on my own I would not have done it.”
The trial continues.
