AN alleged killer told police there was “no truth” in a recording the prosecution claim is a murder confession, a jury heard.

David Roustaby, now 45, alleged he had nothing to do with the death of David Clarke, whose body was found by Towthorpe Bridge north of York in 2007. Mr Clarke was 43 and lived in the same building in Huntington Road as Roustaby.

The jury at Leeds Crown Court heard agreed evidence that Mr Clarke’s death certificate, signed in 2007, gave the cause of death as drowning.

A coroner in the same year recorded an open verdict with a note that there was no evidence showing how Mr Clarke drowned, the jury heard.

Roustaby, now of Rawcliffe Lane, was arrested on April 9, 2020, after two people handed police a recording of him claiming that he killed Mr Clarke.

Roustaby denies murder. He accepts that he spoke the words on the tape.

In a police interview, he said he could sum up the tape as “drunk, three people drunk shouting their mouth off, making up an absolute load to impress.”

In a prepared statement he said: “There is no truth in anything that I said about harming Mr Clarke.”

In a statement read to the jury, retired doctor Alfred Wiseman told police on April 18, 2007, he had been walking his dog at Towthorpe Bridge on the River Foss that morning.

“Two feet away from the river bank on the opposite side of the river, I saw a body face down in the river,” Dr Wiseman’s statement said.

“He was not moving at all.

“In my medical opinion, he was dead. I could see no-one else.”

The jury heard agreed evidence that Roustaby was convicted in 1996 at Hull Crown Court of stealing a car and setting it on fire.

He was also convicted in 2002 at York Crown Court of affray and ABH when he discharged a blank firing pistol close to a police officer’s ear in a police vehicle.

The prosecution allege that Roustaby used his then girlfriend’s car to take Mr Clarke’s body to the bridge before setting it alight in Water End, York.

The trial continues.