Massaro murder accused is a convicted burglar

A man accused of battering and stabbing an elderly couple to death is a convicted burglar who had started taking crack cocaine days before the double murder, a jury heard.

Ireneusz Bartnowski told Wolverhampton Crown Court that he broke into the house where Giuseppe Massaro, aged 80, lived with his 77-year-old wife Caterina and was there when they were killed.

But the Pole, who arrived in the UK eight days before the death of the couple who lived next door to his sister, insisted: "I did not kill them. I was downstairs when it happened."

Bartnowski, aged 22, alleged the culprit was fellow Pole, Wojciech Ostolski, who is not charged with the murders, but denies handling property stolen from the home of Mr and Mrs Massaro in Woden Road, Park Village, Wolverhampton.

Bartnowski claimed he used a hammer to break in through a back window before letting 32-year-old Ostolski, of Chervil Rise in Heath Town, inside. He said no-one was home.

He told the jury yesterday through an interpretor: "We had been inside for 20 or 30 minutes when I heard a noise. We were upstairs and I suggested that we should run away through a window. Ostolski put on a balaclava and told me to give him the hammer. Some time later I heard someone walking upstairs. I ran out and saw Ostolski fighting with the gentleman."

He claimed as he ran downstairs, Mrs Massaro was in his way, continuing: "She had a knife in her hand which I snatched from her, cutting my hand."

Bartnowski, from no fixed address, who denies the double murder, had started taking crack cocaine days before the couple were killed on April 21 last year, the court heard.

He was convicted of stealing bottles of wine from a house he was renovating in Poland in 2008.

The trial continues.