It was less than a month before his death that Gary Morgan uttered the 11 harrowing words.
He was black and blue, having been subjected to yet another attack at the hands of his girlfriend Emma Walsh. Just one of a catalogue of assaults had marred their relationship, which by March 2022 had been ongoing for roughly a year.
Graphic designer Jason Keating had initially formed a friendship with Gary after seeking the tradesman's services back in 2019. He bumped into his mate while the latter was working on a house near Sefton Park in the early spring.
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Mr Morgan's face was bruised, his nose was cut and scabby. The 36-year-old told an understandably alarmed Mr Keating that Walsh had "tried to bite his nose off and stolen his phone off him".
He told his friend: "She's attacked me again. She's a psychopath, she batters me and she tried to bite my nose off."
When Jason departed urging him to "take care", Gary's final comment to him was: "I can't help it. I love her, but I know she's going to kill me."
This was on March 17. Three-and-a-half weeks later on the evening of April 10, Walsh fatally plunged a knife into his heart.
And Gary was far from the only person who had predicted it. The dad had been told the same by various members of his "close knit" family time and time again over the previous 12 months.
Kevin Morgan, one of his five brothers, recalled saying to him: "It's not good for you this. If it carries on, you will end up hitting her back or you will end up dead."
Another sibling, Paul, warned him it "would only end in tears". Paul's long-term partner Diane Harvey advised Gary to leave Walsh, adding: "If you don't, she's probably going to kill you."
She recounted another chilling conversation, in which she told Mr Morgan: "I did ask him if he wanted to be buried or cremated. Because, if he did carry on with Ms Walsh, that would be the decision his mum would have to make."
Kerry Toner, Diane's daughter, thought he "would end up being killed or end up retaliating and end up in jail". And Gary had also repeatedly raised his concerns with Walsh via texts.
"I want you out of my life. I'm not staying around to get killed by you."
"I can't stay with you. I'll end up seriously injured."
One message said: "I'll end up dead soon". Another read "you'll end up killing me".
Mr Morgan told Walsh: "Every time we go in the flat, there's no-one to stop the murder. To be honest, I'm scared of what you'll do."
After a previous altercation in which she had stabbed him with a butter knife, Gary messaged her to say: "Picking a knife up is bad, never mind sticking it in my neck. You could have killed me.
"This time you've gone too far. Next time you might not be as lucky and hit an artery."
One warning would prove to be poignantly and agonizingly correct. In it, Mr Morgan said: "You'll end up on a murder charge."
From time to time, he would leave Walsh. But, inevitably, his complex but enduring love for her meant he would go back after a few days.
Things did not begin this way. It was 31-year-old Walsh who made the first move, getting in touch with Gary over Facebook around March 2021.
A trial at Liverpool Crown Court heard of his excitement ahead of their first meeting, and how he had tasked his family with tidying their home in Prescot to make a good impression on his new love interest. The pair hit it off and, within a short space of time, he had for all intents and purposes moved out and gone to live with Walsh at the bungalow she shared with her dad on Lavan Close in Everton.
But, only a few weeks in, Gary's loved ones noticed a change in him. The incidents of domestic abuse subsequently documented were as numerous as they were heartbreaking.
Walsh had attacked him with the "tools of his trade", swinging a rake at him and leaving him with a "big gash on his eyebrow" after hitting him with a spirit level. He was regularly seen with black eyes, and even bite marks across his body.
When family and friends spotted the injuries he had sustained, Gary would be quick to make excuses. The dog had scratched him while they were playing, he had walked into a cupboard door, the remote had hit him in the face, he had got into a fight with a neighbour, he had slept on an air bed which deflated in the night and left him with bruises "all down one of his sides".
A somewhat bizarre incident in the autumn of last year proved to be the catalyst in him opening up. The couple had been due to stay at a hotel one night, but Mr Morgan drunkenly fell asleep in the lift.
He had apparently been "going up and down in the lift all night" before waking up with no shoes on. Gary left in a taxi "under the impression Emma was with some lads they had been speaking to the night before".
It was at this point that he confessed to his mum and dad that he was being abused. His father James Morgan said: "He started telling us all the black eyes were caused by her.
"That's when it all came out. He was telling us that she was beating him every time they went out.
"There was a time she had a butter knife and tried to stab him with that. He told us she smashed a plate and tried to slice his cheek with the plate - she was aiming for his neck, that's what he told me.
"My stomach was turning over, the way he was getting beaten. I was nearly sick over it."
In December 2021, Gary's mum Sandra was in hospital when James witnessed an attack first-hand as Walsh - who had her face "scrunched up as though she really wanted to hurt him" - threw a Subway sandwich at his son and kicked him in the head. He recalled: "I heard a ruckus in the living room, I heard her shouting at him and Gary shouting at her.
"That was the only time I ever seen her attack him. As soon as she seen me, she started crying."
On March 1 this year, Gary's cousin Lorna Gerrish bumped into him in the A&E department of the Royal Liverpool Hospital. The midwifery lecturer was waiting with her husband, who had injured his leg.
She said of the chance meeting: "Initially, I didn't actually recognise it was him because of the injuries to his face. The left side of his face appeared swollen and bruised - there appeared to be puncture marks across his nose."
Mr Morgan told her "my Mrs has attacked me". Later, when Ms Gerrish was giving him a lift home, he described how Walsh had "jeopardized" his attempts to resume contact with his child after she had become "verbally abusive towards the mother of his daughter".
Walsh was "usually drunk" when she attacked Gary, while "cocaine use figured" in their relationship. She was described as "controlling, abusive and jealous of any contact" that Mr Morgan had with other women - real or imagined.
The texts between the two painted him as being at a low ebb. He documented how Walsh had spat at him, punched him, refused to let him shower, "smashed a glass and come at him with it" and "threatened to send Crocky heads to his mum's house".
In a message in May, Gary told her he had "not felt this depressed in ages". Later, he added: "I love you, always will, you just scare the s*** out of me.
"Don't want a flat with you so you can lock me in there and try and stab me. I'm getting you done for this and biting my arm."
His landscaping business, Amazing Paving, had previously been flourishing. But Gary was having to cancel and postpone several jobs as he did not want his customers to see him with black eyes and other injuries Walsh had given him.
One, Linda Turner, described his state of mind when he was working at her home in Widnes in October and November last year. She said of his attendance one morning: "He just didn't look himself.
"He actually looked like he'd already done a day's work, he looked knackered. He looked really low in himself.
"He said about issues that he'd been having with an ex. He just said she'd attacked him at the weekend and she'd punched him with a knife.
"He looked quite tearful, quite vulnerable at that point. I said 'you don't need to put up with that'.
"He had a shirt on with no collar, and just below it you could see a line and another line below it - just about an inch each. I said 'you've got two marks on your neck'.
"I showed him in the mirror and he looked shocked. I said 'if that had been any closer to your neck, we wouldn't be having this conversation'."
Walsh meanwhile falsely stated she was pregnant and threatened to kill herself. She asked Mr Morgan to look after her two adopted sons and said she would be "looking down on them".
Walsh and Mr Morgan had stayed at his mum's the night before the murder, leaving at around 10am and eating at McDonald's before returning to Lavan Close. He had been "making pallets in the back garden" with her father while she carried out chores.
The couple and Gary's close friend Lee Taylor then went to the shop to buy "ciggies and a pack of Stella", drank the cans then left for the Belmont pub on West Derby Road - picking up cocaine en route. They watched Liverpool FC's draw at Manchester City - a Premier League, Sunday, 4pm kick-off which ended 2-2 - in the back room of the establishment, which was described as being busy on Grand National weekend.
They then stayed for karaoke night before Mr Taylor got the bus home and Mr Morgan and Walsh walked back to her dad's together at around 10pm. Potential suggested flashpoints for what was to follow included his two-minute FaceTime call while on the way home with his youngest brother Liam, who had been at the bingo with his aunt and her granddaughter.
Walsh was said to have become paranoid at who Gary had been speaking to on the phone. Then, at 10.35pm, he changed his Facebook cover photo to one of him and her to a picture of only himself.
Another suggestion was that Walsh had seen and hugged a man she knew in the pub, which "caused friction". According to her, this led to suspicion from Mr Morgan when her phone was "pinging" once back home.
Her neigbhour John Daly was waiting for Match of the Day 2 to begin when he saw the couple out in the street from his window. He witnessed an altercation between the two which last a "couple of minutes", and saw Walsh "push him away".
Mr Daly recounted: "They seemed to be arguing, but not shouting loud. It could have been a friendly argument, I don't know.
"I seen the girl's hand go up to the boy, he seemed to jerk back. If they were playing around or arguing, I couldn't really say."
Whatever exactly happened next inside 8 Lavan Close, at 11.20pm Walsh alerted the emergency services by dialling 999 - saying her boyfriend was "cold and had gone purple". She told the North West Ambulance Service call hander the first of several differing accounts of how he had come by his injuries, having apparently been attacked by "some fella in town".
The killer went on to suggest that Mr Morgan may have had a run-in with one of her exes. Police then arrived at the scene to find her performing CPR.
Paramedics took over the efforts to save his life, and officers led Walsh outside to discuss the events leading up to the stabbing. She repeated the same story, and replied "that's heavy that" when arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.
Gary Morgan was rushed to the Royal Liverpool Hospital in a critical condition, but was declared dead shortly after midnight. When Walsh, who by now was in custody at Wavertree Road Police Station, was informed she "became extremely upset, slumped down and started crying".
She was heard to say: "Gary, bring him back. He was everything for me.
"Sometimes I do things I can't remember. But we're all only human."
Walsh was said to have fallen asleep repeating "one, two, three, four", akin to the motion of giving chest compressions, before waking up crying. First interviewed by detectives in the early afternoon of April 11, she gave a second invented story.
Mr Morgan had apparently smashed her Goodmans bluetooth speaker and become physical with her. After pushing and shoving between the two, he had then supposedly fallen and been wounded by a shard of broken plastic from the device.
This was swiftly rubbished by the findings of the post-mortem investigation. Gary had suffered a "deep stab wound" to his chest, with an implement having passed through his ribs and left lung and into his heart.
A smaller knife wound was discovered to his upper left arm. And Mr Morgan has sustained a minor cut to his neck.
The pathologist concluded that the fatal injury could not have been caused by the piece of speaker. Instead, it was "entirely compatible with having been caused by" a bloodstained knife found in the kitchen sink by crime scene investigators, who also discovered a Nike hoodie Gary had been wearing was mid-cycle in the washing machine.
Once this was put to her in another interview in the morning of the following day, Walsh confessed. But she claimed to have only stabbed Mr Morgan in self-defence.
Her account was: "We’ve had a few drinks at home, we went to the pub, we got back home, he smashed me speaker. He started getting hostile, he’s pushed me, I’ve pushed him.
"So I went into the kitchen, just to get out the way, and then he’s come in and started grabbing me. He’s screaming in my face, pushing me - so I picked up a knife, but he’s had hold of me.
"I only hit him that side, and then we both took the jumper off. Then he started coming at me speaking all verbal, shouting, being abusive to me and then he just started coming at me, grabbing me, pushing me.
"He always grabs me by the throat and stuff, I’ve been here a few times through domestic violence and stuff. I’ve got pictures on me phone of a bust nose, black eyes, but this time it just went too far."
Walsh was charged with murder, a count which she pleaded not guilty to in July. Her trial subsequently opened on Wednesday, September 28.
Taking to the stand, Walsh said that Mr Morgan had tried to throttle her before the fatal stabbing, telling the jury: "He followed me into the kitchen and started shouting. He pushed at me, so I pushed him back.
"He put his hands round my throat and began lifting me off the floor. I thought I was going to die.
"I stabbed him once with the knife. I just wanted him to get off and stop.
"I didn't want to kill him or cause him serious harm. I loved him."
Of her changing accounts, Walsh stated "I was scared, petrified of what I'd done". She said their relationship had been "okay" at first, but problems arose when they began drinking together.
Walsh said: "He was paranoid. Sometimes I'd be jealous, and at others he would think that of me.
"These arguments became physical after a few months. The drink and cocaine would be the occasion of fighting between us."
Mr Benson picked a hole in her account, in that she claimed to have picked the kitchen knife up off the draining board to her left with her right hand while being restrained by Mr Morgan and then stabbed him to the left of his torso. Ultimately, there were too many questions and too many proven lies for the jury to side with her.
This was reflected in that fact that after only one hour and 37 minutes of deliberations, they found Walsh unanimously guilty of murdering the man who family and friends described as a "gentle giant", "the most gentle, kindest person" and a "quiet, shy guy".
She refused to be present as she learned her fate, with Richard Pratt KC - defending - saying that she had been "extremely nervous". The Honorary Recorder of Liverpool Judge Andrew Menary commented "there have been times when I have feared she hasn't wanted to engage for whatever reason".
Walsh will be sentenced on Monday morning. The judge added: "Inevitably, the sentence is life - the question for the court is to determine the appropriate minimum term."
"It will not assist her position at all if she refuses to come. I would be very concerned if she was attempting to manipulate things, but these are stressful times."
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