HEROIN addict Daniel Wall started to wake up from a drug-induced sleep as his killer stood over him with a bloody weapon, a court heard today.

John Paul Marshall, 43, smashed the left side of Mr Wall's skull with a two-handed swing of a heavy lamp-stand before his victim could get out of the chair.

Seconds earlier, Marshall had hit heroin dealer Kevin Mulgrew, 38, three or four times with the same weapon as he slept on a nearby settee in the Gillygate council bedsit.

Mr Mulgrew and Mr Wall, 27, both died from massive head injuries.

Under cross-examination at Leeds Crown Court today, Marshall, an unemployed musician and heroin addict of 15 years, said he hit Mr Wall only once. He said: "I think he did start to wake up."

Earlier, Marshall had said he had been driven to the edge by lack of sleep, heroin withdrawal and intimidation by the pair, who had outstayed their welcome after he invited them in three days earlier.

He said that he woke up on December 1 last year to find that Mr Mulgrew was asleep on his sofa with a tube used to inhale heroin smoke still sticking out of his mouth. Marshall grabbed the lamp-stand and cut off its cord with a pair of scissors, before attacking both men.

He told the court he then held a plastic bag over their faces to make sure they were dead.

Then he stole £1,000 cash and gold jewellery and a watch from Mr Mulgrew.

James Goss, QC, prosecuting, said Marshall then tidied the flat, covered the bodies and hid bloodied furniture. He said: "He did not like the sight of blood. Things were getting a bit difficult, weren't they?

"You could not move the bodies because they were too heavy and bodily fluids had dripped down the wall to Ovengloves (the bakery below the flat)... you thought you better get out of the country."

The court heard that Marshall began "stocking up" on heroin by gathering all the drugs in the flat and buying more from a friend.

The next day, December 2, he caught a bus to Doncaster before travelling by train and ferry to Calais, in France, and then on to Holland.

He was arrested in Amsterdam and extradited back to the UK. The jury was told how Marshall told the arresting officers that he had killed the two men, but said they had threatened him and had "asked for it".

He claimed he was bullied by the two, who moved in after their previous home was raided by the police and boarded up.

He said that after a few days, when he suggested that the two should move on, they threatened to take his cannabis supply and his money and told him that they knew where his two sisters lived.

During their stay, they gave him a small amount of drugs, but he said it was not enough to sustain his £30-a-day habit.

Marshall has denied murder, but has admitted killing the two men on the grounds that he was provoked.

The case continues

Updated: 14:36 Tuesday, December 21, 2004