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Pitsea Woman Laura Davies Planned to Dump 'Controlling' Boyfriend Jordan Taylor Weeks Before He Stabbed Her to Death, Family Testifies
Weds 6th Jan 2016, Yellow Advertiser

Pitsea woman Laura Davies voiced plans to dump her ‘controlling’ boyfriend weeks before she was stabbed to death, a court has heard.

Family members testified at Chelmsford Crown Court today that she had decided to end her relationship with 22-year-old Jordan Taylor, of Churchill Avenue, who is currently on trial after denying a murder charge.

Laura, 21, died of multiple stab wounds on July 3, 2015.

Tearful relatives claimed Laura had confided in them that Taylor had stopped her wearing certain clothes and tried to stop her from attending family gatherings, convinced she was plotting an affair.

Three relatives claimed they heard him berate Laura for attending her niece’s birthday party.

Laura’s mother Dyanne Lambert told jurors her daughter had first met Taylor as a teenager, while she was living with her father in Derby.

Mrs Lambert testified that her daughter moved back to Essex and lived with her in Leigh-on-Sea when she was 18, to pursue her dream of working with horses.

Recalling her daughter’s childhood passion for animals, she testified: “She would sit and watch the Discovery Channel for hours – horses, any animals, really. She just loved her animals.”

A few years later Laura got a full time job at the Essex Horse and Pony Protection Society in Pitsea and moved into the facility’s staff accommodation.

Mrs Lambert testified that she would visit her daughter regularly, telling jurors: “She used to say I was too over-protective of her because she was so tiny. I said, ’You’re still only tiny. You’re still my daughter. You’re still my baby. I just want to know that you are okay’.”

Mrs Lambert testified her daughter mostly wore size six clothes.

She told jurors that in October 2014 Laura told her she was asking Taylor to move in.

She explained: “She just said he had been made homeless and he was sleeping on somebody’s couch and she just wanted to help him and give him a roof over his head... He was going to stay there as friends and then try and get on his feet and maybe get his own place. I think that was the idea of it all.”

Laura’s older sister Joanne Bright later added: “She said he had nowhere to live. His parents had thrown him out and he had nowhere else to go. She couldn’t see him on the street. He was going to stay on the sofa.”

Mrs Lambert recalled meeting Taylor before he moved to Basildon, telling the court: “When I was living in Leigh he came down and stayed for a few days. I think at that point he was living in Swindon with his parents.”
Over the coming months relatives came to believe the pair’s relationship had developed into something more than friendship.

Miss Bright said Laura confessed in a phone call that the relationship was ‘slowly progressing’, after she noticed they seemed ‘quite friendly’ at her mum’s house before Christmas.

When Taylor spent Christmas with the family, Mrs Lambert said, “I had an inkling that maybe it was becoming more, but she didn’t ever say it.”

After Laura and Taylor became romantically involved, relatives said they noticed her behaviour changing.

Mrs Lambert said her daughter stopped wearing her normal clothes, such as vest tops and a Jack Daniels t-shirt.

She told the court: “Because they were short-sleeved, she said he didn’t like her wearing them... That Jordan didn’t like her wearing those tops for work. I think it was because there were other young men.”

Miss Bright wept as she described changes in her sister’s personality.

Telling jurors they had been ‘very close’, she said: “She was like one of my daughters... We had never, ever gone a week without speaking.”

She recalled one conversation, while Laura was living in Derby, in which her sister described first meeting Taylor, telling Bright he was ‘a bit weird and a bit full-on’.

Defence barrister Vincent Coughlin QC suggested Miss Bright may have her ‘wires crossed’ and be describing a different boy, but Miss Bright said she was confident her memory was accurate.

Miss Bright testified that Laura’s phone calls grew shorter and her family visits became far less frequent once she became involved with Taylor.

Through tears, she said: “She became very quiet. I would phone her and our conversations would be about two minutes long, whereas they used to be four or five hours long. She would go and do something, make excuses.

“She was never what I would call a loud or outgoing girl. She was always quite quiet. But she just became really shut off. Subdued.

“We did talk about it. She told me Jordan was very controlling, that he didn’t like her going out and she did go out one night with her friends from the horse sanctuary, when she came home he caused a major row and started calling her a slut.”

Mrs Lambert said Laura was evasive when she broached the subject of her behavioural changes, saying: “Because I was so over-protective with her, I think she wanted to try and be her own person and deal with it.”

Miss Bright testified that on June 13, last year, Laura told her she was planning to dump Mr Taylor.

She said: “She was telling me that he had got really controlling and she wanted to end the relationship, but she wasn’t prepared to see him out on the street, so she was going to let him stay there – but she couldn’t take being controlled the way he was controlling her anymore. She said he had taken over her bank card because he didn’t have a job and she basically had had enough.”

Mrs Lambert told how the following day, after a birthday party for Miss Bright’s daughter, she received a call from Taylor’s phone.

Laura had visited earlier in the day and been dropped home by Mr Gefael, but Taylor had not accompanied her.

Mrs Lambert answered the call but, she testified, because she is partially deaf, she could not make out what was being said.

After putting it on loud speaker in front of her daughter Miss Bright and Mr Gefael’s daughter Terri-Anne, the trio heard an argument at the other end of the line.

Mrs Lambert and Miss Gefael said they struggled to make out the words but Miss Bright testified to hearing some of the exchange.

She told the court: “It was muffled. It was like it was in his pocket. But when he raised his voice you could clearly heard the words he was saying.

“He was shouting at her about being home late that day, and why did she come home late. Very faintly, you could hear Laura say she was waiting for Dave to take her home, to which he replied, ’I told you I didn’t want you going in the first place’. Then something about cooking dinner, or something, was said.”

Mrs Lambert testified that she hung up, called Taylor back and got no answer, so called Laura. She told the jury of eight women and four men that Laura was ‘offish’ and did not seem to want to admit she had been arguing.

Kimberley Skilbeck, partner of Laura’s older brother Glen, testified that Laura confided in her at a family barbecue in June that she planned to end her relationship with Taylor.

She said: “I asked why Jordan wasn’t there and she said he thought she was going to the barbecue to meet another guy and start an affair.

“She said that he had become really possessive over her and that he didn’t like her wearing certain clothes and that she felt suffocated by him. She didn’t want to be with him anymore. She was going to end the relationship.

“I told her that it wasn’t a good relationship to be in and to end it. She seemed upset but she knew what she had to do. She didn’t like being controlled.”

Mrs Lambert testified that she last saw her daughter the day before she was killed, on a trip to buy a fan for Taylor.

She said: “It was warm. She was okay but her words were, 'He keeps moaning he wants a fan’. She said, ’I don’t know why he can’t get it himself’.”

On Thursday, July 2, Laura went shopping with Mrs Lambert and her partner Dave Gefael. They dropped her home at roughly 8pm. It was the last contact the mother and daughter had.

Miss Bright said she last spoke to Laura on the day of her death.

She told jurors she had arranged to go and see Magic Mike 2 at the cinema with her younger sister the following day.

Her last message to Laura was sent at 7.58pm.

Police were called to a report of Laura’s stabbing, in Pitsea Hall Lane, at 8.15pm.

The trial continues.

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