Darren Bonner, 24, (pictured) was found strangled and beaten
A walker at a remote beauty spot heard a snoring noise and found a fatally-injured naked man buried alive in a shallow grave.
Darren Bonner, 24, had been strangled and beaten before he was left in a semi-conscious state in a freshly-dug hole along the picturesque Northumberland coast.
When his body was found he was clinging to life with permanent brain damage but eventually died 16 days later.
Newcastle Crown Court heard Richard Spottiswood, 34, grew and sold cannabis with Mr Bonner, and carried out the attack after accusing him of spying for an arch drug rival.
The pair, along with Spottiswood’s girlfriend Lucy Burn, 29, from South Shields, had been spending the weekend at Cresswell Towers Holiday Park, Northumberland.
But after a row broke out in the early hours in the caravan they had booked, the prosecution said Spottiswood began to strangle Mr Bonner, from Sunderland, in a headlock, bursting blood vessels in his face.
Post-mortem evidence also showed around 12 blows to his back from a rod-shaped weapon.
Spottiswood is then accused of driving the body in the back of his van a short distance down the road, pulling the body through a hole in the wall and spending around an hour digging the shallow grave for his body.
Both Spottiswood and Burn are accused of murder, which they deny.
The jury were told Burn had already admitted assisting an offender by evading the police and telling them lies.
Tim Roberts QC, prosecuting, said: ‘Sometime after 8am on July 10 2017, a man was walking up the shore road from Lynemouth to Cresswell on the Northumberland Coast.
‘There was a dry stone wall beside the road and behind the wall the man heard what seemed to him to be loud snoring noises.
Richard Spottiswood, 34, and Lucy Burn, 29, (pictured) both deny murdering Darren Bonner
‘Stopping and listening for a while, he heard loud repetitive moaning sounds. He shouted out but there no response.
‘No one else was about that morning so he carried on in the direction of Creswell towards the holiday park.
‘On his return journey as he passed the same point he hears the same noises and moaning sounds.’
Mr Roberts said the man then called the police, as he was concerned someone might be in trouble, and two officers were sent to the scene.
He added: ‘The officers climbed over the wall and into the dense undergrowth behind it, following the narrow path to trace the source of the noisel.
‘In the wood they came upon a naked man lying in an open dug our shallow grave in the earth. He was curled up in the foetal position, moaning and apparently shivering.
‘Although he was still breathing he was not responsive to the officers’ attempts to rouse him.’
Mr Bonner, Spottiswood and Spottiswood’s girlfriend Lucy Burn had been spending the weekend at Cresswell Towers Holiday Park (pictured)
Mr Roberts said evidence for the fall out was shown in a message Mr Bonner had sent to his ex-girlfriend a few days before, saying ‘I have fallen out with Spotty, he’s going to do us in, I have got to f*** off’.
He said Spottiswood had bought a garden fork from Asda and had been seen by another motorist reversing his van up to the wall, where Mr Bonner’s body would be discovered.
He said: ‘Darren Bonner was in the back of the van at that time and was being dumped in the grave.’
At first, Burn denied knowing anything about Mr Bonner’s death, but after court proceedings had begun she asked to speak to the police and told them about the argument.
She claimed Spottiswood told her to lie to police about their movements in the van and she played no part in the murder.
Spottiswood also changed his original story from knowing nothing about the death to admitting they had argued after going to the hole to bury stolen guns.
The trial continues.
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