Worksop double-murderer lied to police about ‘excellent’ relationship with elderly victim

Lawrence Bierton was jailed in 1996 for the murders of two sisters and released on licence for the second time in 2020.

Pauline Quinn, aged 73, was found dead at her home on Rayton Spur, Worksop, on November 9. Bierton denies her murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Bierton admitted lying in his first three police interviews after he was arrested driving Mrs Quinn’s blue Renault Clio the next day.

He told detectives she screamed when he climbed over the fence into her back garden and refused to lend him a fiver.

"I pushed her. I dont know why," he said. "It just doesn't make sense. I needed a drink to stop me feeling my stomach was in knots.

"She landed on the living room floor. She moaned a bit. I picked up a table and hit her with it. Straight down on the top of her head.

"She got up sat on the settee. I turned that thing around and I hit her with it. To quieten her. She passed out. I pulled her on to the floor. She was covered in blood."

Bierton panicked when Mrs Quinn managed to pull an emergency “lifeline” cord. He put the broken table into a carrier bag and ran back to his house.

He later dumped the bag in a canal, waited for it to get dark, and drove to his sister’s home in Sheffield in the Renault Clio. He was arrested after giving his nephew a lift to work in Barnsley.

Bierton told police he is alcohol dependent and said he smoked crack cocaine and downed two bottles of rum on the day of the alleged murder.

Earlier this week, Prosecutor John Cammegh KC said Bierton, aged 63, offended repeatedly until his conviction at Sheffield Crown Court for murdering two elderly sisters.

Nottingham Crown Court heard he was recalled to prison in 2018 for "repeated failures to address his behaviour" and drug and alcohol misuse.

He was then released again on licence in May 2020 and was offered a bungalow next to Mrs Quinn's rented council property in November 2020.

Mr Cammegh told the jury: "What is unusual about this case is that the defendant admits that he killed the deceased.

"What he did is not in issue. The issue for you to decide will be whether or not he was of diminished responsibility at the time."

Mr Cammegh said blood staining on the ceiling and walls, and skull and facial fractures, proved the "visceral" nature of the attack.

The jury was played a recording of the "lifeline" activation, in which banging could be heard.

Mr Cammegh said: "This, we say, is when Lawrence Bierton murdered Pauline Quinn in her sitting room by striking her repeatedly about the head and about the face with a wooden coffee table."

Bierton denies murder but has admitted a charge of theft. The trial continues on Monday when psychiatrist evidence will be heard.