A MAN jailed for life for murdering a woman and dumping her body in a bay has launched a third appeal against his conviction, claiming it could not be proved how or when she died.
Jamie Lee Warn was convicted in December of murdering Zsuzsanna Besenyei in May 2018. He was sentenced in March.
It was the third time Warn had been convicted, having twice successfully appealed.
Representing himself before the Court of Appeal yesterday, Warn said there needed to be an ‘identifiable act’ in a murder or manslaughter case, which he argued was not present in his case. He said medical evidence from pathologists had not ascertained the cause of death or exactly when it took place.
The Royal Court previously heard that in 2018, when Warn was 55, he murdered the Hungarian national and put her body into the boot of her Ford Fiesta, before dumping her at Le Pulec, on the Island’s north-west coast.
‘Natural causes, suicide or accidental drowning has never been ruled out in this case,’ said Warn.
‘No one knows whether the deceased was alive or dead when she went in the water, and no one knows how long the deceased was in the water,’ he added.
This meant, according to Warn, that he should not have been convicted of murder.
‘No murder has taken place, and Zsuzsanna Besenyei was not murdered,’ he added.
Instead, he claimed the prosecution ‘tried to draw the jury into speculation’.
Warn said: ‘No jury should be left to decide how a person has died. They are members of the public, not qualified medical practitioners or pathologists. They had no option but to speculate.’
Guilty verdicts from the previous two trials were overturned by the Court of Appeal following issues with the way in which they were conducted.
During his third trial, Warn was accused of embarking on an ‘elaborate cover-up’ after dumping Miss Besenyei’s body. This included driving her car to the low-tide mark near St Aubin as part of efforts to make it appear as if she had taken her own life. At the appeal yesterday, Warn argued that the prosecution had not proved the case beyond reasonable doubt.
He also alleged that he had his right to a fair trial ‘taken away from him’, claiming that the judge told the jury that Warn would be discharged from proceedings if they had not reached a verdict by the end of the allotted time for the trial, leading them to ‘rush to get the verdict out’.
He also raised concerns over how directions were given by the judge.
Setting out his submissions, Warn questioned the reliability of evidence heard in the trial, stating: ‘No evidence was produced in court that there was ever a body in the boot of the car.’
And he questioned CCTV footage previously presented in court. Footage recorded immediately after the time when Warn is thought to have killed Miss Besenyei shows him walking into the nearby Checkers Xpress and buying a bottle of hand sanitiser.
On the night of 14 May, CCTV also captured Warn getting into Ms Besenyei’s car and driving it out of the car park.
The vehicle was recorded by cameras travelling across the west of the Island.
At the same time, Warn’s phone systematically connected with mobile phone antennas from First Tower to the north-west of the Island.
One of the antennas was located in Guernsey and experts say it could have only connected to a phone in Jersey if the mobile device was at Le Pulec.
Yesterday, Warn disputed mobile phone evidence from the trial, but Crown Advocate Simon Thomas, prosecuting, called his submission ‘inexplicable’.
Advocate Thomas and Crown Advocate Matthew Maletriot represented the prosecution.
Advocate Thomas admitted there was a ‘discrepancy’ in CCTV evidence before the jury, but this had been raised at trial, and which the prosecution ‘did not shirk away from’.
‘We were dealing with cameras administered by a number of different people,’ he said, meaning as far as investigators were concerned, ‘there was some time lapse’.
George Bompas QC, Lord Anderson Ipswich and Sir Wyn Williams were presiding.
