Guilty: Two men convicted of gruesome York murder
Two York men are facing life in prison after they were found guilty of murder.
A jury was unanimous today in finding both Curtis Turpin, 35, and Adam Hudson, 41, guilty of murdering 35-year-old York man Francis David McNally in the most gruesome of circumstances at Turpin’s flat in Markham Crescent.
Jurors deliberated for over three hours before returning unanimous guilty verdicts. Turpin was also found guilty of assaulting occasioning actual bodily harm against York woman Sara Green in a separate incident at his flat.
Mr McNally was kicked, stamped on, struck with a metal vacuum pipe and strangled with a pair of pyjama bottoms during the horrific incident on October 27, 2021.
Prosecutor Nicholas Lumley KC said the murderers kicked and stamped on the “defenceless” victim and Turpin strangled him with the pyjamas.
He said Mr McNally had been “beaten and strangled to death by the two men” after an apparent drink-fuelled argument.
He said both suspects were so drunk they had been unable to flee the scene.
He said each of the three men knew each other, and each had “their own difficulties”, primarily with drink and drugs.
Turpin attacked his erstwhile friend Ms Green on September 11, 2021, which also involved choking. During that incident at Turpin’s flat just off Haxby Road, he grabbed her “with force” around the neck.
Mr Lumley said Turpin told Ms Green he “wanted her out” and “ragged her around the room by the wrists and arms”, before grabbing her around the throat “tightly, deliberately choking her (until) she struggled to breathe”. Ms Green is thought to have fallen to the floor and lost consciousness.
Huge amounts of vodka
A few months later, Turpin invited murder victim Mr McNally to sleep at his flat for a while.
“That arrangement was short-lived and came at a time when Turpin and Hudson decided they wanted him out of the flat,” said Mr Lumley.
“It was a decision they made when heavily in drink, having consumed what to most of us would be huge amounts of vodka.”
Police were called to the ground-floor flat at about 5.30pm on 27 September and found Mr McNally’s body on the living-room floor, surrounded by a pool of blood.
The TV was blaring in the background and just a few feet away, in the bedroom, they found Turpin and Hudson, who lives at Rowntree Avenue, York, splayed out on the floor, “comatose” through drink.
There were “many footprints of blood” around Mr McNally’s body, suggesting he had been kicked or stamped on. There were also shards or fragments of black plastic and some “checked material”, namely pyjama bottoms, which had been “drawn tightly around his neck (like) a ligature”.
Inside the bedroom where Hudson and Turpin were “out cold”, officers found two blood-stained metal vacuum pipes. There were also blood spots on the ceiling.
A scientific expert who examined the blood stains said it appeared that Mr McNally, who was also heavily drunk, had been laying on the floor and was unable to move or defend himself when he was attacked.
One of the blood-stained Hoover pipes had a dent in it, suggesting blows had been delivered with the weapon including to the head. A partial palm print on the pipe with the dent was shown to be Hudson’s.
‘Difficult and disturbing case’
A post-mortem showed that Mr McNally had suffered a broken nose, black eyes and a fracture to his neck, ostensibly as a result of strangulation, as well as marks and grazes, which were consistent with stamping, kicking and punching.
The pathologist said Mr McNally had suffered “multiple blows” to his heavily-blood-stained head which would have knocked him unconscious and made him struggle for breath.
Judge Andrew Stubbs KC said it had been a “difficult and disturbing case”.
He told the two defendants they would be remanded in custody until sentence on Monday, (30 January).
He told them they faced life sentences but that the minimum term they must serve before being considered for release by the Parole Board would be determined by legal representations on the day of sentence.