A brave little girl who was rescued from Andrew Innes' house provided key evidence to help police nail the despicable double killer.
Police detectives found the seven-year-old girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, in the software engineer’s house watching cartoons. Innes claimed the girl was his daughter when officers came to his home in Dundee looking for Bennylyn Burke and her two-year-old daughter Jellica.
But detectives uncovered the fact that the schoolgirl was unrelated to him and had spent the previous two weeks in Innes’s house being subjected to horrific sexual assaults and a rape. Innes told jurors that if the police had turned up to his house 24 hours later, officers could have found her murdered dead body.
The child, who cannot be named for legal reasons, also saw Bennylyn and Jellica being murdered at Innes’s home in Troon Avenue. In the shocking few weeks after detectives dug Bennylyn and Jellica’s remains from underneath Innes’s kitchen floor, officers sat down with the child.
A patient police employee sat down with the girl and pieced together the events which led to Bennylyn’s death.
And at the High Court in Edinburgh, jurors sat down to watch the 90 minute long video of the child being interviewed. Before jurors were brought into hear the evidence, judge Lord Beckett asked prosecutor Alex Prentice how long the video was to take.
He described an earlier video of the child as being “one of the most harrowing evidence” he had heard in his entire legal career. He expressed concern about the impact that it could have on the well being of the jury who were sitting a room elsewhere in the court building unaware of the recording’s shocking contents.
In the recording, which was made in May 2021, the little girl could be seen to smiling and laughing and using felt tip pens to draw pictures. At one point, during a break in the interview, the little girl could be seen hiding behind a door and jumping out in front of the interviewer causing the woman to laugh.
The jury heard the girl say: “Andrew pretended that Jellica was hiding because they were playing hide and seek but Andrew killed Jellica. Andrew hid. I counted. Andrew killed Jellica when we were playing hide and seek.”
When the little girl was asked where this happened in Innes’s house, she replied: “Andrew shut the door so it must have been in the bathroom where Andrew tied us all up.”
The little girl said that she also saw Innes ‘kill’ Bennylyn with a hammer. She said: “I tried to call the police. I couldn’t speak.”
During the interview, speaking about the deaths of Bennylyn and Jellica, the little girl said: “I tried to save them but I couldn’t because I didn’t know what was happening.”
She also told the police employee that Innes stopped her from leaving his property. The child added: “Andrew put a rope on the door and attached it to the other door and I couldn’t open it.
“Andrew would open it when he came back. I told him ‘I want to go with you because that was my chance to get out.”
The interviewer also gave the little girl two small pieces of paper which were shaped like human bodies. She was told by the interviewer that one of the bodies was “Andrew” and that she should use a felt tip pen to “give Andrew eyes” and “some hair”.
The little girl then described performing acts to Andrew’s body. During the interview, the girl also spoke of Bennylyn and Jellica. She said: “I pray for them.”
PC Gavin Burns,33, and PC Rhianne Burns were the first to arrive at Innes’ home on March 5 2021. They had been tasked to go there by colleagues from Avon and Somerset Police in Bristol. Officers in the west country had been contacted by Bennylyn’s estranged husband Lexington, 65.
The landlord, of Bristol, told the court that he married Bennylyn in August 2019 after he had met through a dating website. The pair married in the Philippines before returning to the UK.
He said they had a child called Jellica but the relationship later broke down. Mr Burke said that he was supposed to pick up Jellica on February 19 2021 so he could spend time with her. Custody arrangements had been put in place between Mr Burke and Bennylyn.
He told Mr Prentice that he couldn’t make contact with Mrs Burke. He said that she didn’t respond to two text messages and that he tried to phone her. He said that he had also posted a note through her door and that the local social work department got in touch with him because they couldn’t contact her.
Police suspected Bennylyn and Jellica had gone north. And when PC Burns went to the property, he and his colleague learned that Bennylyn and Jellica had lost their lives. PC Burns told prosecution lawyer Alex Prentice KC how Mr Innes had told them that he had met Mrs Burke on a dating website and had begun a relationship with her.
The Police Scotland officer told the court that Mr Innes said he had ended their relationship after he saw her mobile phone and found that she had been messaging other people. He said that he had taken Bennylyn to Cumbernauld and left her in the company of another white male.
But PC Burns said that as Mr Innes was telling him this, he was unable to establish the identity of a “happy and settled girl” who was watching cartoons in the living room of the property. The officer said that Mr Innes claimed the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was his daughter.
PC Burns then told him that Mr Innes then said that he had killed Bennylyn. The police officer, who gave his evidence via video link from another location, said: “He said ‘I killed her. She’s under the floorboards. We got into a fight and I killed her.”
The court also heard from forensic scientist, Barry Mitchell, who was asked to consider evidence in the case. He told the court that DNA found on a condom that had been found in a bin at his home matched Innes and Jellica.
Mr Mitchell also told the court that Innes’s DNA was found in sperm samples taken from the body of the seven-year-old girl he abducted. The court also heard that DNA taken from blood stains found on the handle of a 1.5KG lump hammer were tested and matched the DNA from Bennylyn Burke.
Officers were well on the way to getting enough evidence to ensure that Innes spends the rest of his days behind bars.
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