April Jones Murder Trial Jury To Visit Mark Bridger's House

The nine women and three men will travel from Mold Crown Court with the judge, Mr Justice Griffith-Williams and legal teams to Machynlleth from where the five-year-old disappeared last October. During a two-hour visit to the town in mid-Wales, the jury will enter Bridger’s cottage, named Mount Pleasant, where traces of the little girl’s blood and fragments of a child’s skull were found. They will be shown the wood-burning stove in which tiny pieces of bone were discovered in the ashes and the bathroom where specks of April’s blood were also identified.

The jury will start their visit at Machynlleth Junior School, where April was a pupil and where Bridger attended a parents’ evening on the night he allegedly abducted and murdered her. They will then travel by coach to the Bryn y Gog estate where the little girl lived with her mother Coral, father Paul, her two half sisters and her brother.

They will see the place close to her family home where she was playing with her best friend when Bridger, 47, allegedly put her in his Land Rover vehicle and drove her away. The former slaughter man denies having abducted April, and has insisted that he accidentally killed her when he ran her over. He then claims he placed her badly injured body in his car and drove away but has no recollection what he did with the body.

After visiting the Bryn y Gog estate the jury will see the local cottage hospital before various CCTV cameras that recorded his movements on the night in question are located. The jury will also be taken to a lay-by where three witnesses saw Bridger on the morning after April’s disappearance, carrying a black bin bag. The area was subsequently excavated but no trace of April or her missing clothing were ever found.

The jury visit will also include the point just outside Machynlleth where Bridger was arrested on the afternoon of October. They will then travel to his cottage where they will spend around quarter of an hour examining inside. During the prosecution opening, the jury were told how police had discovered child pornography on Bridger’s laptop computer as well as images of young murder victims including Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

The trial will resume at Mold Crown Court on Friday when statements from April’s parents are expected to be heard.