Murdered couple were found by granddaughter

A grandaughter described how she found her grandparents battered to death in their Wolverhampton home.

Lindsey Booth went to the house of Giuseppe and Caterina Massaro after worried family members spent hours unsuccessfully trying to contact the couple, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard today.

The 23-year-old was on her mobile phone to the emergency services when she walked into an upstairs bedroom of their Park Village house and found they had been murdered.

Her grandparents had been battered over the head with a claw hammer and knifed in the neck and body.

Jurors were told Lindsey had gone to the house in Woden Road with her mother, Emanuella Booth, at about 8pm on April 21.

In a statement read by Peter Grieves-Smith QC, Lindsey said she knew "something was wrong" after noticing a window blind was "out of place".

She called police and the ambulance service just seconds before finding the house looking "ransacked" the court heard today.

Her statement read: "I glanced in the front bedroom and could see the quilt had been disturbed.

"I then went into their bedroom and immediately saw my grandad's legs on the floor at the base of the bed. He was partially covered with a quilt. I lifted the quilt a little off him and saw dried blood on his shirt that covered his chest."

Her grandmother was in a "curled" position next to him, the court heard.

Polish man Ireneusz Bartnowski, who was living next door to the couple having moved from his home country just eight days earlier, is accused of the killings.

Bartnowski, 22, of no fixed address, denies the murders. Wojciiech Ostolski, 32, of Chervil Rise, Heath Town, denies handling stolen goods. The trial continues.