A MAN accused of murdering a charity worker said she begged him to strangle her while they had sex, a court heard today.

A MAN accused of murdering a charity worker said she begged him to strangle her while they had sex, a court heard today.

Robert McCarry told police officers that he had been in the back of Paul Waters' car when Nicola West said “strangle me, strangle me”.

McCarry, 36, said in an interview read out at Ipswich Crown Court that Miss West had told him to strangle her harder and he replied that because of an injury to his hand he couldn't push any harder on her neck.

McCarry said Miss West told him to use something else instead so McCarry used her bra to strangle her before realising she was dead between five and ten minutes later.

McCarry said: “It looked like she was alive and then all of a sudden I realised she wasn't breathing and moving. Then I started panicking.

“I tried to give her feeble mouth-to-mouth - I'm no good at that.

“I just kept slapping her and saying 'wake up, wake up'.”

He said McCarry and Waters had then driven round for days before deciding to hand themselves into police.

McCarry, of Vernon Street, Ipswich, and Waters, 29, of Sandpiper Road, Ipswich, have denied murdering Miss West, a St Elizabeth Hospice distribution manager, in February.

McCarry has also denied two offences of raping Miss West, of Leather Bottle Hill, Little Blakenham, on February 8 while Waters has denied attempting to rape Miss West and aiding and abetting McCarry on one of the rape charges.

Both men have denied perverting the course of justice and McCarry has denied a further offence of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

It has been alleged that McCarry raped Miss West in a flat in Vernon Street after meeting her in a town centre pub and had then raped her again and strangled her after Waters drove them to an area near the dry ski slope at Wherstead. Waters is alleged to have attempted to rape Miss West in the car before her death.

The men are then alleged to have driven around for two days with 34-year-old Miss West's body in the back of the car before handing themselves in at Ipswich police station.