Police found a Perthshire jeweller dead in bed with his body “cocooned” in a duvet and his ankles bound with plastic tape, a jury has heard.
Alan Gardner was stripped to the waist and was wearing pale blue jeans and one sock police witnesses revealed.
He also had an obvious injury to the right hand side of his head, jurors at the High Court at Livingston were told.
Sergeant Andrew Ness, told how he made the gruesome discovery at Mr Gardner’s Balbeggie bungalow a matter of hours after the freelance jewellery repairer was reported missing by his estranged wife Jennifer.
Sergeant Ness, 48, said he took possession of two mobile phones and a household telephone handset he found in a green plastic storage bin at the rear of the house.
He then called for a joiner to force entry to Mr Gardner’s home after his colleague PC Pinkley used step ladders to peer through a gap in the curtains and showed him a shape underneath the bed covers.
He said: “It appeared to be a round, like it was chucked around something in the bed. At that point for me there was potentially someone underneath the cover.”
He said the shape lay diagonally across the bed with the head at the middle of headboard and the feet pointing towards the left side at the bottom of the bed.
He said: “I wasn’t sure whether it was a body. The duvet appeared to be tucked under the object, including all the way round the top and bottom.
“The bedroom was very messy. There were several alcohol receptacles lying about, It didn’t look as if it had been cleaned in some considerable time.”
When the jury was shown a photograph of the duvet-covered corpse, Sgt Ness explained: “It was almost like a cocoon around the object. It was just very tightly tucked under the edges of the object.
“I went up and lifted the duvet to see what was underneath it; it was the body of a male.
“The person appeared to me to be dead due to the colouration of their skin and the expression on their face.
“I also touched the body and it was very, very cold. I shook it to see if I could get any response when I first went in, but I didn’t move it.”
Advocate depute Jane Farquharson said to him: “We know it was Mr. Gardner. Was there anything about the presentation that caught your attention?”
Sgt Ness replied: “Yes. He was wearing jeans which I found rather unusual and his feet were bound together. It appeared to be plastic tape, wide plastic tape. It just didn’t seem like bedtime attire.”
The jury was shown a photograph of Mr Gardner’s legs clad in pale blue jeans and resting on a cushion with his ankles bound together with clear tape.
Local postman Grant Kean, 52, told the jury that Mr Gardner had told him about two weeks before he was found dead death that he had taken in a Romanian man as a paid lodger because he was “a bit short on cash”.
A week later he said he asked Mr Gardner how he was getting on with the lodger and he replied: “Not too good”.
Mr Kean said he knew Mr Gardner repaired jewellery and often received special delivery packages which had to be signed for.
“If I didn’t get an answer at the house I’d go round the back to his workshop shed and get him at the back of the house.”
He revealed that he had seen someone else driving Mr Gardner’s blue Toyota RAV4 car as he passed after completing his deliveries. Mr Gardner was not in the car.
He told the jury: “I only got a quick glimpse just as I was driving past. He looked olive-skinned and had dark hair, maybe somebody in their 30s.”
He said he last saw the deceased a week before his body was found in the house.
He said: “He seemed OK in himself. I remember him walking out of the house and he wasn’t walking very well. He was walking very slowly as if his legs were sore or something.”
Former pizza chef Nikola Zhulev is on trial charged with murdering Mr. Gardner by hitting him on the head with a metal frying pan and asphyxiating him.
Zhulev, 30, is accused of binding Mr. Gardner’s feet and concealing his body in a duvet before digging a grave for him with the intention of concealing the body in woodland at St Martin’s near Guildtown, Perth.
He is alleged to have done this and to have hidden the keys of Mr Gardner’s Toyota Rav4 in a jar of coffee in his flat in a bid to defeat the ends of justice.
In addition to murdering Mr Gardner in his home at Croft Park in Balbeggie, Perthshire, between April 19 and 23 last year, Zhulev is alleged to have stolen valuables from the house and pawned them for cash, as well as using Mr Gardner’s credit card to buy takeaway food.
The Bulgarian national, who has also worked as a takeaway delivery driver, allegedly stole the deceased’s car and car key and other items between April 18 and 20.
It’s alleged that the married father-of-one went to Ramsdens store in Perth High Street on April 21 and obtained £171.28 by fraud by pawning stolen jewellery after allegedly trying to sell similar items at the Money Shop in Perth the day before.
Zhulev is also alleged to have used Mr Gardner’s credit card to buy more than GBP20 worth of takeaway meals via the JustEat website.
He is also accused of possessing of heroin on April 22 and 23 and being concerned in the supply of the class ‘A’ drug.
Zhulev, formerly of 176c South Street, Perth, and now described as a Prisoner in the Prison of Perth, denies all the charges against him.
The trial, before Lady Rae, continues.