Couple murdered homeless woman before claiming her benefits

‘It is almost inhuman,’ prosecutor says

Lisa Bennett's body was dumped in a wheelie bin, Birmingham Crown Court heard (SWNS)

A couple have been convicted of murdering a homeless woman and fraudulently claiming her benefits.

Kevin Flanagan and Kathleen Salmond drowned Lisa Bennett in their bath before dumping her body in a wheelie bin.

The remains of the 39-year-old were subsequently incinerated at a waste facility, Birmingham Crown Court heard.

Jurors heard how the victim was told she would be eating her “last dinner” and that afterwards her body was “callously” put in the bin in the spring of 2013. No trace of Ms Bennett’s body has been recovered.

Flanagan’s own brother told police his sibling had confessed to the crime.

Salmond, who appeared at trial via video link from a bed, was also found guilty of benefit fraud between 8 and 31 May, 2013, and preventing Ms Bennett’s burial – charges her partner had previously admitted.

The pair carried out the killing at their flat in Weirbrook Close in Weoley Castle, Birmingham, on or around 9 May.

Jurors were told how the defendants then “reaped the benefit of Lisa’s disappearance”, after Salmond phoned the Department for Work and Pensions, pretending to be Ms Bennett, and arranging for £230 benefit to be paid into her own account.

Flanagan also used the victim’s phone to text her mother “to make her believe that nothing had happened and Lisa was alive”, prosecutors said.

When questioned over the disappearance, the couple “calmly” told police Ms Bennett was “alive and well” and that she had asked them to transfer her benefits into Salmond’s account.

The pair also invented a boyfriend for Ms Bennett, who they called Ian, and claimed he was collecting the benefits cash each week.

Jurors heard the victim was a drug and alcohol addict, and had last been seen collecting her prescribed heroin substitute from a pharmacy.

They convicted 39-year-old Flanagan, and his co-accused, 40, after a trial lasting just over three weeks.

Simon Denison QC, prosecuting, had told the court: ”It is an almost inhuman thing to do, is it not, to treat not just a human body but the body of someone they knew, as a piece of rubbish to be thrown away.”

Both Flanagan, of Redbrook Covert, Kings Norton, and Salmond, of Farnhurst Road in Hodge Hill, have a string of previous convictions. They are due to be sentenced on Friday.

Ms Bennett’s murder only came to light when the former’s brother watched a television appeal about her disappearance, which “affected him to the extent that he had to come forward, even though he said he loved” his sibling.

Her family “have suffered the appalling grief of not knowing what happened to their daughter”, said the Crown Prosecution Service. Senior prosecutor David Parsons added that Ms Bennett’s mother, Janet, had nonetheless been “steadfast in her quest for the truth”.

Additional reporting by Press Association