Danielle is safe, uncle told mother in phone call

In the frantic hours after Danielle Jones disappeared, the uncle now accused of murdering the 15-year-old made a series of reassuring phone-calls to her mother.

In what prosecutors claim was an elaborate charade, Stuart Campbell telephoned Linda Jones, insisting her daughter would be home safely before dark, claiming to have received text messages from the youngster.

The Crown alleges that Mr Campbell, 44, had kidnapped and murdered his niece after she rejected his advances. Mr Campbell, of Grays, Essex, denies the charges.

Yesterday, 16 months after her daughter disappeared without trace, Mrs Jones was overwhelmed by tears as she related the last occasion she saw her eldest child.

She was giving evidence on the third day of the trial at Chelmsford Crown Court. Standing across from the man accused of murdering her daughter, Mrs Jones, 42, spoke in a barely audible voice.

On occasions, she seemed to have difficulty uttering the name of a man she had known for 20 years, referring to him once as "the defendant''.

Mrs Jones detailed the last time she saw Danielle, going off to school still "high'' on the joys of a recent geography trip. Her voice shaking, she described the uniform her child was wearing, breaking down completely as she recalled the moment St Clere's School, Stanford le Hope, telephoned to ask why Danielle had not turned up.

In the haze of the "dreadful'' hours that followed, she remembered speaking to Mr Campbell on four occasions and denying her daughter would ever play truant. "He said he had had a text message from her earlier that day. He said she said she was in trouble at home again and it was just a normal message she would send to him,'' Mrs Jones explained to the court.

Orlando Pownall QC, for the prosecution, previously told the jury that the message – and one on the next day – had been sent by Mr Campbell from Danielle's phone to his own in an attempt to deflect suspicion.

When Danielle's father, Tony, and friends scoured the local area for her, Mr Campbell did not offer to help.

Yesterday, Mrs Jones told of the arguments she and her husband had with their teenage daughter over tidying her room and washing up. But she insisted, despite Mr Campbell's assertions, they had been infrequent and they had enjoyed a normal relationship with Danielle. One of her last acts before leaving for school on 18 June last year was to leave a belated Father's Day card after a disagreement had been resolved.

But Mrs Jones conceded she did not know Danielle had been texting a soldier called Matt in the weeks before she disappeared.

Nor was Mrs Jones aware the uncle who was trusted to pick up Danielle from the school bus had kept a set of keys to the family home in East Tilbury, Essex, kept a detailed diary of contact with the teenager and appeared to have stolen a set of photographs of the youngster's 14th birthday party.

The trial, expected to last two months, will not sit next Wednesday. It would have been Danielle's 17th birthday.