Killer Andrew Innes tells of rage during Dundee hammer attack

Bennylyn Burke and her daughter Jellica were killed at Andrew Innes' home in Dundee

Warning: This article contains graphic details which some readers may find upsetting

A murder accused has described being "apocalyptically angry" as he repeatedly hit a woman on the head with a hammer at his Dundee home.

Andrew Innes said he attacked Bennylyn Burke after thinking "crazy things" because she resembled two women he felt had betrayed him.

Innes was giving evidence in his defence at the High Court in Edinburgh.

He admits killing Bennylyn and her two-year-old daughter Jellica but denies their murder, citing diminished responsibility.

He said the child died some days after her mother, during a struggle as he tried to stop her touching a dangerous piece of electrical equipment.

He also blamed his steroid medication for his behaviour.

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Innes said he had taken Bennylyn and Jellica to his home in Dundee in February 2021 after driving to meet them in Bristol, where they lived.

He said Bennylyn was in the kitchen, preparing food, when he thought she looked like a combination of his estranged wife and another woman who had left him.

He told the court: "I started to think about all of the spiteful stuff my wife did to me. I got angry.

"I got really angry. I have never got so angry before. There's an expression about your blood boiling. There was a physical sensation.

"I started to think some very crazy things. I thought that the woman in front of me…. was some kind of hybrid.

"I became apocalyptically angry. I picked up the hammer and hit her over the back of the head.

"I was furious, I started to think some crazy things. It's insane."

Innes admits killing Bennylyn and Jellica Burke but claims steroid medication caused his behaviour

He said that after a struggle on the kitchen floor he went to fetch a samurai sword which he kept in his office.

"My memories are fragmented. I don't remember all of it," he told the jury.

"I remember wrestling on the kitchen floor. I had a samurai sword in my office and I remember thinking 'right, I will get my samurai sword' so I went into my office and she started chasing me.

"I remember the blade going in once."

He said he then "kept hitting her until she stopped moving".

Asked where Jellica and another child were at the time, he said they were watching cartoons.

Innes said that after killing Bennylyn he had taken her body upstairs where he placed it in the bath, and he recalled "wandering about in a zombie-like state".

The bodies of Bennylyn and Jellica Burke were found at Innes house in Dundee in March 2021

Questioned about the killing of Jellica, he said his memory was uncertain but he believed it happened three days after the death of her mother.

He said he had been playing "hide and seek" upstairs with the child when she ran towards an electrical transformer.

"If she had touched the wire she would have exploded, I had to stop her, she kept trying to get it," he said.

"She wanted to go to her mum, I was detached from reality, I had no emotional response.

"It seemed logical to me to put her with her mum."

The trial has previously heard that Jellica died of asphyxiation.

Members of Bennylyn and Jellica's family wept in the public seats as Innes gave evidence.

'I was insane'

Innes told the jury he had been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and also had Crohn's Disease, a condition which attacks his immune system.

He said had taken two weekly dosages of his steroid medication and had not slept the night before the attack on Bennylyn, which took place the day he was due to drive her back to Bristol.

When asked why he killed, he said: "Because I was insane, as a result of the steroids."

The court heard that Bennylyn, who was originally from the Philippines, had met Innes online on a dating site.

The bodies of Bennylyn and Jellica were later found hidden under his kitchen floor.

Innes denies murdering Bennylyn and Jellica, sexually assaulting Jellica and raping another child.

He also denies attempting to defeat the ends of justice.

The trial, before Lord Beckett at the High Court in Edinburgh, continues.