A husband killed his wife hours after they wed and stuffed her corpse into a suitcase, a court heard.

The body of Dawn Walker was discovered in a field four days after she and Thomas Nutt married.

The 52-year-old grandmother had not been seen alive since her wedding reception at The Prince Albert pub, in Brighouse, West Yorkshire.

Nutt, 45, was later seen on CCTV wheeling a large suitcase out the back of his home to nearby bushes.

Seconds later police knocked on his front door to investigate a missing person report, a court heard.

‘It is often said someone’s wedding day is one of the happiest times of their life. Sadly, this was not the case for Ms Walker,’ prosecutor Alistair MacDonald told jurors.

Nutt called police on October 31 to say his wife had gone missing from the marital home in Lightcliffe, near Halifax, he added. However, the hard and stark reality was Nutt knew perfectly well her body was lying dead in a cupboard at the property, Mr MacDonald said.

‘He knew she was there because he killed her and put her body there before stuffing it into a suitcase, breaking bones to achieve that objective, before wheeling it to a place at which he dumped her body,’ he told the jury.

Nutt later told police he and Ms Walker had honeymooned in a caravan in a lay-by in Skegness after the ceremony on October 27 at Brighouse Register Office. When they returned home two days later, he claimed his bride – who suffered from depression and bipolar – had demanded a divorce.

‘She put me in jail before, said I had tried raping and assaulting her,’ the court heard he told detectives. ‘She said she was going to do it again. She started screaming and I have hit her in the face and put my arm round her neck,’ he added.

Nutt denies murder but admits manslaughter on the basis he did not intend to cause Ms Walker really serious harm at the time at which he killed her, a court heard. But Mr MacDonald told jurors the defendant was guilty of murder and had lied about taking Ms Walker away for their honeymoon.

He said Nutt killed her before going to Skegness by himself and leaving her body in their house. He alleged Nutt returned days later to act out a charade of telling her daughter her mother was missing and he was carrying out a search.

The trial, at Bradford crown court, continues.

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