A MAN charged with a double murder at a Banbury flat was ‘depressed’ and showed suicidal tendencies in the months before the alleged attack, a court heard.

Raymond Morgan, of Newland Road, Banbury, denies two counts of murder.

The 53-year old is alleged to have killed Mark Pawley, 25, and Adrian Fannon, 39, at his home address on October 1 last year.

As his trial at Oxford Crown Court continued yesterday, jurors heard from Morgan’s daughter Mary Allen, who said that after he was kicked out of his partner’s home in light of an addiction to crack cocaine he had grown depressed.

Speaking via videolink, she told the court: “He was living in his car outside of my house in a car park. He just looked really scruffy.

“He was really down, he just wasn’t himself. He said he would go jump off the nearest bridge into oncoming traffic. It broke my heart, he is my dad.

“He said he didn’t want to be on his own and said the area [Newland Road] was horrible but I said it was better than nothing, he said it was drug head central.”

The court also heard from a number of Morgan’s acquaintances who said that Morgan was a long-standing drug addict and that many fellow drug users would on occasion visit the flat, something which would annoy Morgan.

Morgan denies carrying out the killings, which saw the two men suffer dozens of stab wounds.

Earlier in the trial jurors heard that Morgan had carried out a ‘sustained and savage’ attack in his living room.

The trial continues.