Scream mask killer's target

Diane Lomax was targeted by a woman wearing a Scream mask and armed with a sawn-off shotgun because she was a love rival, a court was told.

Heather Stephenson-Snell is alleged to have meticulously planned the killing of her ex-boyfriend's new lover, even taking shooting lessons, planning escape routes and devising disguises.

The prosecution allege she turned up at her home in Radcliffe, wearing the Hallowe'en mask with the intention of killing Ms Lomax.

But instead she gunned down innocent neighbour Robert Wilkie, aged 43, in Holland Street.

Mr Wilkie, a former army commando and pub landlord, was killed when he went outside at 12.40am on November 1 last year to ask a person banging on his neighbour's door to be quiet, because children were in bed.

Charles Chruszcz, prosecuting at Manchester Crown Court, said that Mr Wilkie found a woman dressed in a long hooded gown, with a Scream mask covering her face, demanding to be let into Ms Lomax's home.

Mr Chruszcz said there was a scuffle when 43-year-old Mr Wilkie ripped the mask off. He was shot at point-blank range with the shotgun Stephenson-Snell had hidden under the robe.

The accused's ex-boyfriend, Adrian Sinclair, told Manchester Crown Court that Stephenson-Snell turned into a stalker bent on making his life with his new girlfriend a misery. She threatened to kill him, mutilate his new love and firebomb their home.

The prosecution allege the Stephenson-Snell, a psychotherapist and a Hell's Angel biker, made complaints against the couple to police, wrongly claiming they were paedophiles, bombarded them with abusive calls and got social security officials to investigate Ms Lomax's finances.

The court was told that Stephenson-Snell, of Crombie Avenue, York, also sent her love rival a Christmas card with pictures of Mr Sinclair kissing a woman whose face had been scratched out.

After the shooting, Stephenson-Snell was stopped by police on the M62 in Yorkshire. Officers found a blood-stained sheet and a shotgun in her car.

Canadian-born Stephenson-Snell denies murdering Mr Wilkie and the attempted murder of Ms Lomax.

Adrian Sinclair, who changed his name from Hussain Ahmed as a teenager, met Stephenson-Snell in 2002 after answering an advert in the Big Issue magazine for someone to dog sit her two Rottweilers and act as a caretaker at her home.

Mr Sinclair, a former stripper in the Farnworth area in the 1980s, said his first impression of her home was that of a "fortress" with nails in the fences and barbed wire protecting the large house, caravans in the garden and a garage where Stephenson-Snell kept motorbikes and which she used as a nightclub for her all-girl Hell's Angel biker group.

Inside the house were what he thought were replica guns and a large collection of knives.

After a road accident in 1992, Mr Sinclair had been left with epilepsy and mental health problems which resulted in several stays in hospital.

A few months before he met Stephenson-Snell, Mr Sinclair told the court he had been beaten up by friends of an ex-girlfriend and was feeling vulnerable.

Mr Sinclair took up the job offer and moved into a caravan in her garden. "It looked like a place I could live because it had a good defence," he said.

"I was full of hope and was on the first steps to building a good future for myself." Stephenson-Snell appeared to be an intellectual person, softly spoken and pleasant, he said.

"I thought I was getting some therapy, believe it or not," he added.

Within a few weeks they slept together but her moods changed. She would turn her music up and go and sit on her motorbike in the garage revving the engine up for hours on end.

When Stephenson-Snell went on a course in New York for two months in 2002, he moved to Hardman Fold Farm, Radcliffe, which was owned by Gary Haslam, a man he regarded as his brother.

While Stephenson-Snell was away, she regularly sent sexually explicit love letters to Mr Sinclair, who started a relationship with mother-of-two Diane Lomax.

They moved in together and on one occasion, at the farm, filmed themselves having sex. When Stephenson-Snell returned in November 2002, he got a friend to drive him to Leeds/Bradford airport to meet her. They went back to York and he claims she seduced him in a caravan.

The next day he said goodbye to her and came back to Radcliffe. He told how Stephenson-Snell warned him that if he was seeing someone else she would cut the woman's breasts off and kill him.

Only later in a phone conversation with Stephenson-Snell did Mr Sinclair admit he had a new relationship. He told how Stephenson-Snell began her campaign of intimidation against them and it became so bad they wanted to move away from Holland Street.

"We were trying to move to a house where she couldn't find us and pester us. It was a traumatic time," he said.

He admitted he had made phone calls to Stephenson-Snell during this time, only in an attempt to get her to stop her intimidation.

He denied suggestions by defence counsel Ben Nolan QC that he was a fantasist who had not had a sexual relationship with the defendant and at one stage had kidnapped one of her dogs.

The court heard that days after Mr Wilkie's death, Mr Sinclair and Ms Lomax's relationship ended.

Earlier Ms Lomax, told the court she had never met Stephenson-Snell. On the night of the night of the killing, she heard banging on the door. Through the door's spy hole she saw someone in a hooded gown and mask. She opened the door part way and saw her neighbour ripping the mask off Stephenson-Snell.

Mr Wilkie asked her: "Do you know who she is?" Ms Lomax replied: "I know exactly who she is." She said she shut the door and heard a bang. When she opened it, Stephenson-Snell was gone and Mr Wilkie was on the pavement, gasping for breath.

Proceeding