The alleged killer of April Jones, Mark Bridger, has told a court he cannot remember where he put her body and that is is ‘somewhere where it has not been found’.
The 47-year-old was answering questions about the search for the schoolgirl’s body on his second day of cross-examination at Mold crown court.
After April’s disappearance on October 1 last year, police mounted the biggest search in British history, the court heard.
Elwen Evans QC, prosecuting, said police had been ‘up hill and down dale, down mine shafts and not found her anywhere’.
She asked Bridger: ‘Where did you put the body?’
Bridger, who claims his memory has gone blank after he knocked April down in a car accident, said: ‘I can’t recall. I still believe I have placed her somewhere.’
Miss Evans suggested April’s body has not been found because Bridger was trying to cover up what he had done.
She said: ‘Why has April’s body, not any a part of it, been found?’
The defendant responded: ‘I have put her somewhere where it hasn’t been found.’
Bridger denied putting the body somewhere ‘carefully chosen’. He said he told police at the time about the places he had been and walked, including caves and rivers.
He told the jury he had a recollection of ‘holding’ April and placing her on the floor in front of the fireplace in his living room at his cottage.
Miss Evans put it to him that it was a ‘major’ memory to recall and asked when it had ‘come back’ to him.
Bridger said it was during discussions with his legal team.
Asked about the presence of saws, hacksaws and knives in his living room, Bridger told the court they were ‘tools’ for outdoor activities.
He denied he owned a ‘boning knife’, saying it was nothing more than a ‘standard kitchen knife’.
Bridger, of Ceinws, mid-Wales denies abduction, murder and intending to pervert the course of justice by disposing of, concealing or destroying April’s body.
He says he accidentally killed April when he ran her over and accepts he must have got rid of her body, but says he cannot remember how he disposed of it because he was suffering memory loss caused by alcohol and panic.
The prosecution say Bridger snatched and murdered her in a sexually motivated attack. The trial continues.
