Loner 'stabbed Harrods salesgirl to death as she was out jogging'

A Harrods sales assistant was stabbed to death by a sex attacker as she jogged across a common near her home, a jury heard yesterday.

Egeli Rasta, 27, was missing for 12 days before her naked body was found in a shallow grave in July last year.

She was attacked by 23-year-old "loner" Garath Davies on Mitcham Common, South London, where she often went jogging or sunbathed topless, the Old Bailey was told.

Davies, who lived nearby with his mother, is accused of stabbing Miss Rasta with a kitchen knife before burying her body in a copse on the common.

He then used her mobile phone to download rap music from the internet and to send photos of his dog to a friend, the court heard.

Detectives found Miss Rasta's baseball cap and shorts in Davies's rucksack at his home along with a bloodstained knife wrapped in a sock.

The bag also contained sex toys, condoms and liquid Viagra, said Mark Ellison, prosecuting.

Miss Rasta, who came from Estonia, disappeared on July 4 last year, a day after working a shift at the LK Bennett fashion concession at the department store in Knightsbridge.

She was reported missing by her boyfriend Lesley Anthony, a 42-yearold French polisher from West Lonmemorydon, after she failed to meet him or return his calls.

Mr Ellison said: "She was fit, athletic and quite strong and would often go jogging on Mitcham Common and sunbathe there, sometimes topless."

Davies also regularly frequented the common, walking his Staffordshire bull terrier Tyson.

Mr Ellison said it was unclear precisely what happened during the attack as Miss Rasta's body was so badly decomposed by the time it was found that pathologists could not establish the cause of death.

But her body was found without clothes, "clearly suggesting a sexual motive," he said.

Davies told detectives he had no memory of the day of the attack and claimed to have suffered blackouts in the past.

During his childhood, he said, he had spent time in foster care and special schools because he had problems controlling his temper.

"He said that for most of his life he had been scared he might harm someone.

"It was a feeling of his mind going blank and uncontrollable as if it wasn't really him," said Mr Ellison.

"He said he usually only lost his memory for about ten minutes and it had never happened before that he had lost his memory for a whole day. Things were very blurry."

The jury heard that Davies told police: "When I have been in a temper, when I have been upset or something, my brain just goes off, becomes like a cloud I have over everything. Half the stuff I don't remember."

When confronted with DNA evidence, he told detectives: "I can't remember doing it, but I am afraid that I did do it."

An acquaintance who sometimes spoke to Davies on the common said that while he had no friends and wore "odd" clothes, he was the kind of person "who wouldn't say boo to a goose".

Miss Rasta's body was discovered after a man out walking his dog alerted police to a "powerful smell" coming from a woodland area.

Mr Ellison said: "The body was naked and was lying face up in a shallow depression in the ground, with some soil covering the head and upper torso, over which pieces of wood had been laid."

It was surrounded by used condoms, cigarette butts and a beer can with traces of Davies's DNA.

The name "Gaz" was found carved on a tree nearby.

Davies denies murder and perverting the course of justice by burying the body to avoid detection.

The trial continues.