WEALTHY PENSIONER(76) MURDERED BY HER FRIEND WHO WAS SET TO INHERIT HER £1MILLION FORTUNE

LATE PATRICIA

 A wealthy pensioner was murdered and dumped in a disused shaft on her five-acre estate by a married friend who stood to inherit her £1million fortune, a UK court heard yesterday.

Lonely divorcee Patricia Goodband, 76, was said to be ‘emotionally attached’ to Christopher Symons, whom she had known for 30 years. She had left him two properties and her £230,000 life savings in her will.

Motivated by ‘financial gain’, Symons, 63, is accused of beating her to death before sending texts from her phone to cover up her disappearance. His lover Jennifer Creasey, 73, is accused of lying to help him. Joanna Glynn QC, prosecuting, said Mrs Goodband was last seen alive on December 22. 

Her body was found after a long search in a 12ft shaft in the grounds of her home in Woodham, Buckinghamshire, on January 21. Miss Glynn told the jury that her body had been hidden under bags of rubbish, soil and stones. She said: ‘What Symons had done was callous, brutal and cruel in the extreme.

‘She had been murdered and brought there by her killer, having received extremely serious head injuries. She was beaten around the head at least six times, twice around the face and four times around the back of the head.’ Miss Glynn said Symons enlisted Creasey and his sister Kathleen Adams to cover his tracks.

She said Creasey became involved because she was ‘passionately in love’ with Symons, with whom she was having a sexual relationship, adding: ‘This was an extremely callous murder.

'Features of it are very unusual. It was planned over a period of time. It was done for gain and the motive is clear. The perpetrator of it used other people to cover his tracks.’ Mrs Goodband and Symons ran a haulage business from her home, where he often spent the night. He lived nearby with his wife, Anita and one of his three adult sons, Reading Crown Court heard.

CHRISTOPHER      PATRICIA

‘This was not a normal friendship, this was not a normal business relationship,’ said the prosecutor. Mrs Goodband had only one child, her estranged daughter Samantha, who lived in Yorkshire. In 2008 she created a will in which she left two properties and all her money to Symons.  Her home was worth £600,000, while a second property was valued at £200,000. Mrs Goodband was said to be highly intelligent, but Symons cast doubt on this after she disappeared, implying to friends that she had shown early signs of dementia.

Miss Glynn said this was to lay a false trail and give the impression that she was visiting her daughter.

The court heard how Symons sent texts from Mrs Goodband’s phone on December 18 and 22 to try to throw police off the scent. Despite their closeness, the jury heard how Mrs Goodband had written in her diary about Symons attacking her violently in the past.

After an alleged beating on Christmas Day 2007, she wrote: ‘Chris snapped. I got thumped aside my jaw - ear - deaf - aches.’ 

Symons denies murder, while Adams, 74, of Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire, and Creasey, of Benson, Oxfordshire, deny perverting the course of justice.

The case continues.