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Photographs of inside Mark Bridger's house where traces of April Jones' blood were found are released, as a jury visits key locations in case

 

Jonathan Brown
Friday 03 May 2013 11:23 BST

Images have been released of the inside of the remote cottage where police found suspected juvenile skull fragments and blood belonging to schoolgirl April Jones.

The pictures show the wood burner close to which a number of blades including the charred remnants of a boning knife were recovered at the home of Mark Bridger, a 47-year-old former abattoir worker.

The jury in the murder and abduction trial at Mold Crown Court was taken to the property three miles from Machynlleth, mid-Wales where the five-year-old disappeared whilst out playing last October. Her body has never been found.

The pictures show a disorderly room at the whitewashed cottage. A pair of trousers appears thrown over a chair, papers and cardboard are strewn on the floor and cans of Strongbow cider - which the jury heard Bridger bought with his benefits on the day April went missing – are deposited by the stove where it is claimed concentrations of April’s blood was found.

Groups of four jurors took in turns to walk through Bridger's former home, Mount Pleasant, in Ceinws, where traces of blood were also found in the hallway and bathroom.

The prosecution has claimed the house was extensively cleaned shortly before Bridger’s arrest. He denies abduction, murder and concealing the child’s body insisting she died after being in collision with his Land Rover.

The nine women and three men on the jury panel were also shown Machynlleth Junior School, which April attended, and the nearby Bryn y Gog estate, where she was last seen.

As they arrived at Bridger’s house the group stopped briefly in the front garden, where three bunches of flowers and a pink and white teddy bear had recently been left for April, who would have celebrated her sixth birthday a few weeks ago.

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