A SON accused of murdering his parents in a bid to speed up his inheritance had just £5 in his bank account on the day they are thought to have died and had been applying to payday lenders, a court heard.
Stephen Seddon, from Seaham, is alleged to have shot dead his father, Robert, 68, and his mother Patricia, 65, at their home at Clough Avenue, Sale, last July.
Mr Seddon, 46, denies murder in a Manchester Crown Court trial and suggested he had been “set up.”
Prosecution lawyers have dubbed Mr Seddon an ‘ungrateful son’ who was eager to get his hands on their £230,000 estate and buy a pub.
The court has been told that in the months before the couple died, they bought him a house in Seaham and gave him £40,000 in cash.
Financial analyst Alan Mort told the jury that the balance of Mr Seddon’s account on July 4, the day they allegedly died, was just £5.45. On that day he applied for £2,500 from one of three loan companies he had approached that month.
Both Mr Seddon and his wife, Nicola, were out of work, and she had borrowed from the Department of Work and Pensions social fund in 2010 and 2011, the court heard.
Mr Seddon is alleged to have tried and failed to kill his parents in March last year by driving a BMW they were in into the Bridgewater canal in Manchester.
The court heard that on the day before he died, Robert Seddon told his GP that his son had money problems and that he thought he had tried to kill him.
When Alan Hedworth QC, defending, suggested that ‘all of sudden Stephen Seddon became a suspect’ following the revelation, Trafford CID officer Det Sgt Simon Clapperton admitted that ‘obviously our suspicions were aroused’.
The detective told the court that in a phone conversation with Mr Seddon in the wake of the killings, the defendant said he was ‘gutted’ at his parents’ deaths, but seemed in ‘no rush’ to come to Manchester from his home in Seaham.
Det Sgt Clapperton said that when asked if he had given any thought to his parents’ funeral arrangements, Mr Seddon said ‘he didn’t have any money to pay for them’. He is also alleged to have said that a neighbour had heard his parents arguing ‘the day before’, and referred to his father being ‘gullible’ and having concerns about them falling prey to cowboy builders.
The jury also heard Mr Seddon told Det Sgt Clapperton that a neighbour had seen a Saab driving away from the couple’s home at speed on July 6, the day the bodies were found.
The jury was told that in police interviews Mr Seddon replied ‘no comment’ to a number of questions and clutched his chest as if he was unwell. He said he thought someone was trying to set him up, but replied ‘no comment’ when asked who.
Proceeding