AN alleged killer told a court he made up a murder “confession” to get a tenancy agreement.

David Jonathan Roustaby, 43, claimed he “was as baffled as everyone else” about how 45-year-old David Clarke’s lifeless body came to be in the River Foss near Towthorpe Bridge in 2007.

He claimed Mr Clarke had arranged for him to rent a bedsit in the same building as the 45-year-old and that the two men used to have binge drinking sessions together.

He was “fond” of him, he said.

“Did you murder Mr Clarke?” his barrister Kama Melly QC asked him at Leeds Crown Court.

“No I didn’t,” he replied.

“Did you put him in the river?”

“No, absolutely not,” he said.

He claimed he had lied about murdering Mr Clarke to a couple in a bid to persuade them to rent their house to him.

Earlier during his stay in the witness box he alleged: “I am not a violent person.”

Richard Wright QC for the prosecution asked him about his list of convictions for violence including causing actual bodily harm when Roustaby’s gun went off in a police van.

Roustaby alleged that had been by accident.

Roustaby, now of Rawcliffe Lane, denies murdering Mr Clarke.

He accepted he said the words on a recording of the “confession” played to the jury.

He alleged he had been drinking and when drunk he told tall tales.

He claimed he had combined fabrication with details in newspaper reports in 2007 and 2008 about Mr Clarke’s death.

He denied that he had held a gun to Mr Clarke’s head or discharged it in his presence in 2006 as he claimed he had in the “confession” and as Mr Clarke had alleged in a statement to police in 2006.

He claimed that he spent the evening before Mr Clarke’s death at his ex-girlfriend’s, though he had told police in 2007 he and Mr Clarke had been in his room drinking that evening.

He alleged he had not returned to his home until the following morning when police told him about Mr Clarke’s death.

In cross-examination he accepted he and the couple he told the murder account to were in a kind of sexual relationship, though they didn’t have sex.

The jury heard they had a house he wanted to rent.

The trial continues.