10:22am Thursday 19th January 2006
CLARKE MURDER TRIAL: MARTIAL arts fanatic Michael Clarke, who is accused of stabbing his parents to death, fuelled his obsession by watching videos of men fighting with knives, a court heard on Tuesday.
Clarke, 21, is accused of stabbing his father Milroy, a former Wiltshire police officer and Kennet traffic attendant, and mother Joan, a total of 31 times in a ritualistic killing before calmly attending a rock concert.
He is then said to have returned home and pretended he had just discovered the murder scene.
Clarke denies two counts of murder.
On Tuesday, his friend John Chamberlain told Bristol Crown Court the pair had watched a training video showing Filipino knife fighting and another film called The Assassin.
Mr Chamberlain said the videos showed lethal fighting. "If you were to be involved in that kind of thing you would be dead in seconds," he told the jury.
On another occasion, in late 2002, he said Clarke discussed killing his parents after a row with his father about the volume of the TV as they watched The Assassin.
He said Clarke, a graduate trainee at a bank, asked him: "What would you do tonight if I was to kill my parents?" Mr Chamberlain replied: "I would probably go to the police."
Mr Chamberlain, who regularly stayed with the Clarke family before that night, said he never dared sleep at the house in Melksham again.
"That night I just couldn't sleep," he said. "I never stayed there again. I was scared that something might happen."
Childminder Joan Clarke, 56, and her husband Milroy, 70, a retired police officer who used to live in Roundway Gardens, Devizes, were found stabbed to death at their home in Berryfield Park on December 6, 2004.
The prosecution claims that, shortly before the killings, Mr Chamberlain arrived to meet Clarke ahead of their journey to the rock concert in London.
They were walking to meet a third man, John Scott, in the centre of Melksham, when Clarke said he had to dash home, the jury was told.
Mr Chamberlain said: "A while later I received a phone call from Mike to say he was on his way back. He sounded flustered and out of breath.
"There was a disturbance in the background, but it could have just been wind rushing past the phone.
"When he came back I asked him what took you so long'.
"He told me his dad had forgotten to put some stuff in the holdall he had."
The prosecution alleges this is when Clarke stabbed his parents as Mr Chamberlain waited for him.
Mr Chamberlain said John Scott then pulled up in his car and they drove to the Wembley Arena.
He said: "Mike was quiet most of the journey. He kept the holdall on the back seat next to him."
It is alleged that a third friend, Stuart Painter, 22, met Clarke at the concert venue and helped dispose of the murder weapon along with Clarke's blood-stained shoes and coat.
He denies a charge of impeding the apprehension of an offender.
The case continues.
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