Gardener 'battered lover to death after she mocked his prowess'
By Michael Seamark
16th February 2010
A gardener battered his lover to death after she mocked him over his 'physical sexual adequacy', a murder trial heard yesterday.
Peter Ling wept while describing how he 'lost it' when Linda Casey goaded him after the couple had sex in a wood.
He had arranged to see Mrs Casey, a lecturer he met at horticulture evening classes, near Banstead Woods in Surrey to 'have it out' with her over the future of their two-and-a-half-year affair.
The twice-married redhead was two-timing Ling with another lover, Ian Tolfrey, and Ling lost control after demanding to know whether she was seeing someone else, the Old Bailey was told.
Ling, a married man, said he had seen references in her email account to dating sites and her relationship with another man.
When they were in the woods they had sex and afterwards he asked his lover: 'Are you just playing around with me or not?'
Ling, 50, told her they needed to 'clear the air and get things sorted out' but she tried to get up and get away, he said.
There was a struggle in which they were 'wrestling around' and 54-year- old Mrs Casey scratched him.
He told the court: 'I said, "We are not getting anywhere here. What is it you are trying to hide from me?" She said nothing. I asked, "Is there someone else?" I must have asked five or six times.
'She shrugged her shoulders in a way that led me to believe she wasn't ever going to tell me that she wasn't seeing someone, but she wasn't saying no. She gave me that look that led me to believe she was.'
As she got up to leave, he said, he asked 'why?' and she made a 'flippant' comment - described by his barrister Ignatius Hughes, QC, as being about his 'physical sexual adequacy'.
Ling told the jury: 'She said, "You are not big enough for me" in a gloating sort of fashion. She was getting the last word over me. I've always been conscious of my size. I just lost it completely.
'I was like a pressure cooker waiting to go off and when she said that comment it went off in my mind.'
He said he pulled the mother of three down, grabbed a piece of chalk and started hitting her with it in an 'instantaneous' way.
'I just kept doing it without realising how many times,' said Ling, of Wallington, Surrey, who denies murder.
Asked by his barrister if he was in control of himself, he replied: 'No, I wasn't.'
He said he heard 'gasping noises' and then saw his lover had stopped breathing. 'I'd just killed someone. I couldn't believe I'd done such a thing,' Ling added.
He left Mrs Casey's body partially-covered by leaves, folded her clothes and fled the scene.
Ling had earlier described how the couple enjoyed ' spontaneous' sex in parks and woods and had claimed there were problems in his marriage, adding: 'I discovered a life I hadn't known for a very long time. It was very, very passionate.'
At the start of the trial the court was told Mrs Casey ran her lovers to a strict timetable - meeting Mr Tolfrey at her allotments on Wednesdays and indoors on Fridays, and dating Ling on Thursdays and Saturdays.
But it ended in murder in August when Ling discovered he had a rival, it was alleged.
Mrs Casey was killed two days after refusing to have sex with Ling in the bushes of the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Wisley, Surrey.
The prosecution say Ling accepted he caused her death but claimed it was manslaughter through provocation.
The case continues.
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