JURORS retraced the steps of a murderer yesterday when they visited two sites where it is alleged Jake Blakeley knowingly helped his brother bury the body of Jayden Parkinson.

The visits to countryside south of Didcot and All Saints Churchyard took place on the second day of the 18-year-old's trial for preventing a lawful burial in December 2013.

Jake Blakeley, of Venners Water, Didcot, denies the offence, but the prosecution argues he helped his older brother Ben, 23, dig two graves that they both knew would be used to hide Jayden's body.

Last year Ben Blakeley, of Christchurch Road, Reading, was found guilty of murdering his 17-year-old former girlfriend on December 3, 2013, after she told him she was pregnant with his child. 

Yesterday morning his younger brother's trial moved from Oxford Crown Court to fields near East Hagbourne, where Ben claims he first hid Jayden's body after killing her on a wooden footbridge.

Prosecutor Matthew Walsh told jurors it is not in dispute that on the night of December 4 both brothers returned to the site of the murder and dug a hole that the teenage girl's body was buried in.

But he said Jake insisted he thought they were burying "weapons" and did not see Jayden's body being placed into the makeshift grave.

Then Mr Walsh told jurors that in the early hours of December 9 the brothers buried her again in All Saint's Churchyard in Didcot.

Mr Walsh said: "It is an undisputed fact that that is what happened, the movement of her body from one site to another.

"Moving a body from remote fields back into Didcot town isn't going to be an easy exercise."

Jurors were taken from the fields to the graveyard off Lydalls Road, where they had the grave of the Blakeleys' uncle Alan Kennedy pointed out to them.

Mr Walsh said the 65cm-deep hole that was dug in the existing plot was Jayden's exact height, 1.67m, and was measured out with screws and string.

He said the brothers even took flowers off another grave to place on top once they had put the loose earth back in.

The barrister said to the jury: "Imagine it was you doing the digging, remember that this isn't in your back garden, but in a graveyard.

"What would you think you were doing?

"Jake Blakeley accepts he was partly responsible for digging that hole, that grave as we now know it became.

"He says he was told and accepted that it was going to be used to bury a dead cat and a dead dog."

Mr Walsh also told the jury that the brothers had been caught on CCTV at about 5.30am at Didcot railway station after leaving the graveyard.

He said: "What does that embrace tell you about their relationship, about the trust that have placed in each other?

"The prosecution invite you to come to the following conclusion.

"At the very latest, by the time Ben Blakeley is coming back to Didcot on the evening of the burial, Jake Blakeley knew about Jayden's death and had been invited to help move her body."

The trial continues.

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