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A convicted killer accused of murdering two of his friends whose remains were found burnt and dismembered near his Cornish woodland cabin has insisted he did not kill them but had discovered their bodies on his land.
James Desborough claimed he came upon one of the bodies hanging from a tree and the second lying naked in a stream.
He told a jury at Winchester crown court he accepted he had disposed of their remains at a time when he was high on ketamine, speed, cannabis and tequila.
“I had lost all concept of reality,” he said. “I can’t remember what was I thinking. I made some bad decisions.” Asked how it was that two bodies had appeared in his woods, he said: “It’s a series of unfortunate circumstances.”
Desborough, 40, denies murdering Claudio Aquilino, 57, and Daniel Coleman, 43, but admits concealing their bodies in the dense undergrowth close to his cabin near St Austell.
He also accepted in court he had killed a cellmate while in prison in Devon awaiting trial for the two alleged murders. The defendant rejected the suggestion he had killed the cellmate because he was snoring, but did not say why he had done it.
Desborough, who described himself as an unemployed civil engineer, said he, Aquilino and Coleman had lived for a while at a hostel in the Cornish resort of Newquay. He described himself as homeless, having no money, and suffering addiction problems.
The defendant said after leaving Newquay, he and Aquilino went to live in the woodland cabin in early summer 2025. He said Aquilino was paranoid and thought people were out to kill him.
Desborough told the jury that he came out of his cabin one day and found Aquilino hanging from a tree. He said: “I started going into shock, panic,” and that he had disposed of the body in a stream in his land.
Desborough said Coleman was also paranoid and got into fights. Later in the summer, he said, he had come across Coleman’s naked body in the stream. Desborough said he had no idea how Coleman had died, but he had used a hatchet to cut up his body. He said he felt “numb” by this point.
The defendant was asked about a claim by the prosecution that he had told a forensic biologist working in the woods that he liked the dismemberment scenes in the serial killer show Dexter. Desborough said he had simply mentioned the show because he had seen an advert for it on a bus.
The defendant accepted he had taken Aquilino’s and Coleman’s money after their deaths. He told the jury he had probably spent it on “beer and drugs”.
Ahmed Hossain KC, prosecuting, put to Desborough that he was involved in the deaths of three people in a few months, and asked him if he got a thrill from killing.
Desborough repeated that he had not killed his two friends, and the killing of his cellmate was “out of character”.
Asked about a note police had found in which he had written: “I’m a killer and ready to execute any predators”, Desborough replied that it was “creative writing” and was about a character, not him.
The trial continues.
