A BLOOD stained table leg was removed from the Wisbech flat where 22 year old Ben Wilson was attacked, a murder jury heard today (Tue). Blood was also found on a chair, a sofa, a coffee table and a bin at the home of the Neil Gowler. Various items of bloo

A BLOOD stained table leg was removed from the Wisbech flat where 22 year old Ben Wilson was attacked, a murder jury heard today (Tue).

Blood was also found on a chair, a sofa, a coffee table and a bin at the home of the Neil Gowler.

Various items of blood stained clothing were removed from the flat in Golding Place by scenes of crime officers, along with bottles of vodka, a computer games console and computer games.

Earlier in the day Gowler's neighbour, Carole Matthews, the secretary of the tenants' association, gave evidence telling how on the night Ben Wilson was discovered injured, she had heard girls banging on a door and shouting 'Baz, open the door'.

The banging went on for a few minutes, then things went "deadly quiet," she said.

When police arrived at Golding Place on November 13 she pointed out the door to Neil Gowler's flat, which was ajar. After police cordoned off the back of the flat, she went to visit a friend, and saw Barry Steward walking across the car park asking "what the hell is going on?"

Since the attack on Ben, Mrs Matthews has not been able to go to bed. "I felt safer in the living room", she explained.

Ten days after the attack, her door buzzer rang at 1.20am; she heard a male crying and crept to her bedroom window.

"I heard a male say 'Neil, why did you kill him, you idiot' she said. She thought the person speaking was Adrian Pettingale.

When she went to call 999 there was a tap on her kitchen window, and then her buzzer rang again. She heard Pettingale say 'you made me kick him in the head, Neil'

Mrs Matthews also told how she mistakenly informed Neil Gowler's mother that it was her son injured in the flat.

Later, she was told that police were looking for Barry Steward so when she saw him she spoke to him and told him Ben had died. Her diary of that meeting said: "Barry told me that Neil told him that Adrian Pettingale kicked Ben in the head at least three times because Ben said Neil was a queer"

When cross examined, Mrs Matthews said it was an accident she told Neil Gowler's mother it was him that was injured, she had been doing her best to be helpful,

Barrister Stephen Ferguson said Adrian Pettingale accepted he had been to her flat in the early hours of November 22 but denied banging on the kitchen window.

The jury looked at entries in Mrs Matthew's diary which told how she heard Pettingale say:"Why did you kill him Neil, you idiot." There was no reference in her diary to the words recorded in her statement "you made me kick him in the head, Neil."

She said Neil Gowler was a "lovely lad" and a pleasant tenant. In the past she had done his washing, given him furniture and sowed up a ripped jacket.

Witness Lisa Marie Fisher said Adrian Pettingale was known locally as "winger" because he "swings both ways." Pettingale took her to Neil Gowler's flat to help with a computer programme on November 10. She thought Gowler "a bit smug and thought himself God's gift to women." Three days later she was contacted by Neil Gowler via her computer and she sent him amusing videos and pictures with names including "naked men cleaning car" and "naked ladies on a bike."

On November 16 she saw Pettingale in the Flowerpot pub in Wisbech when he told her how he had found Ben Wilson injured. He told her "there was blood on his face, he had made gurgling noises, and he wiped the blood away with his sleeve jacket and called an ambulance."

She had heard that Pettingale told other people he was present when Neil Gowler hit Ben Wilson with a table leg.

Forty three year-old Adrian Pettingale of Prospect Place, Wisbech, and Neil Gowler, 26, of Golding Place, Wisbech, are both charged with murdering Ben Wilson, 22, in Wisbech last November at Gowler's home in Golding Place.

The trial is now in its third week.