Preston court names boy, 17, found guilty of murdering teaching assistant
A 17-year-old boy who was found guilty of the murder of a teaching assistant can be named as Rocky Marciano Price after reporting restrictions were lifted at Preston crown court.
The body of Lindsay Birbeck, 47, a mother of two, was discovered wrapped in two plastic bags in Accrington cemetery in Lancashire on 24 August last year.
Price was found guilty of murder by a jury at Preston crown court after they deliberated for more than four hours. Sentencing is expected to take place on Friday.
Birbeck had been missing for 12 days, with hundreds of local people joining in a search operation. She left her home in Burnley Road, Accrington, for a late-afternoon walk to a nearby wooded area known as the Coppice. When she failed to return home her family raised the alarm.
Price, who was initially not named during the court proceedings, had been looking for lone women in the wood and is thought to have killed Birbeck shortly after she entered the Coppice.
A postmortem examination concluded the cause of death was neck injuries. Severe compressive force appeared to have been used, according to a Home Office pathologist, which could have been inflicted in several ways, including through stamping, kicking, or kneeling on the front of the neck.
Price attended a police station several days after police released CCTV footage of a man with a wheelie bin . He admitted dragging the bin with Birbeck’s body inside from the Coppice, across Burnley Road to the cemetery where he buried her.
In an account described by the prosecution as “implausible fiction”, he claimed he was not responsible for her death but that a stranger approached him and offered him a large cash reward if he disposed of the body.
