HAYLEY MURDER TRIAL: HOURS after killing his girlfriend Hugo Quintas hid his bloodstained clothes and the knife used to slit her throat and caught a plane to Portugal.

Joaquim Da Cunha, known as Sergio, travelled with him to Bristol airport on June 11 and Quintas said his friend had advised him to "hide himself" in Portugal "He said you killed the girl, now you have to run away to Portugal' and I just looked at him, I was nervous. Sergio said when he arrived back home he was going to clean the whole house before the police arrived," he said.

The court heard Quintas had phoned Trowbridge Police from Portugal on June 13. When asked by Paul Garlick QC why he made the call he replied: "I wanted to hand myself in." He arranged to meet officers in Porto airport at 11am but said he waited three to five minutes and saw no sign of them and decided to go to Madrid. He spoke to his father, who told him Miss Richards had been killed, and he saw a newspaper which showed a picture of her and a headline which said police were searching for a young Portuguese man.

Quintas then decided to send two letters, one to Miss Richards and one to her family saying he had nothing to do with her death. He said: "I didn't want the family to know I had killed Hayley because I was ashamed of myself for what had happened."

He was arrested in Spain on June 21 and was flown back to Britain eight days later. In an interview he told the police the bag containing the knife and clothing had been disposed of at the Canal Road recycling centre but later admitted it had been thrown over a wall near Trowbridge Hospital. It was recovered by police on March 3.

In his original statement Quintas said he had killed Miss Richards in self defence when they had both struggled to gain control of the knife, but later changed his story. When asked by Mr Garlick why he had lied he said: "Initially I wanted it to look as an accident and I didn't want to aggravate my situation.

Quintas told the court he had changed his story after speaking to his father, who told him he should tell the truth or things would be worse for him.