A man accused of killing an escort says he put her head first into an oil drum and burned her body rather than phone an ambulance because his workshop “looked liked a murder scene”, a court has heard.

Mark Brown is on trial for the alleged murders of Alexandra Morgan, 34, from Sissinghurst, and Leah Ware, 33, from Hastings, who he met through the same adult service website. He has denied both charges.

Ms Morgan, a mum-of-two, was last seen at a petrol station in Cranbrook on Remembrance Day last year.

Her disappearance sparked a huge missing person investigation by Kent Police and her charred remains including bone and tooth fragments were later found at a building site where the defendant worked near Sevenoaks.

This morning at Hove Crown Court Duncan Atkinson KC, prosecuting, asked the defendant to explain his thought process on the day of Ms Morgan’s death on November 14 last year.

Brown had arranged to meet Ms Morgan at the farm building he rented near Hastings where he had a car workshop.

The father-of-three told the court the young mum died after tripping over a socket on the workshop floor when going out to fetch him a cigarette from his car.

The court heard Miss Morgan flew through the air like “a cartoon character slipping banana skin” and hit her head on a piece of angle iron.

Brown told jurors: “It’s kind of hard to explain because I was in shock.

“I literally saw her head about Land Rover bonnet height going downwards.”

Immediately blood poured out and began to flood the workshop floor, he claimed.

When CPR failed he searched for a pulse before he realised she was dead, he told the court.

Asked why he didn’t call 999, he replied: “Because my priority was to stop the bleeding and find a pulse.

“There was no point in calling an ambulance if it’s not going to get there in time?

“She was dead in my view.”

Brown told the court he was not “thinking straight” and cleaned the blood up with a broom before wrapping up Ms Morgan’s body in a sleeping bag and moving it to the container.

When quizzed on his reasons for discarding the body, he said: “I had a dead escort. How would that look?

“When I walked back into that workshop it looked like a murder scene, there was blood everywhere.

“It was a stupid thing to do. Worst ******* mistake I ever made in my life.”

CCTV was later shown to jurors of Brown filling up a can of a “tenner's worth” of diesel from a nearby Esso petrol station.

But Brown said his actions were not premeditated and his decision to eventually dispose of Ms Morgan’s body head first in an oil drum was influenced by “urban legend”.

The prosecution say Brown killed Ms Morgan and burned her body in an incinerator in November 2021 – the same way he is alleged to have disposed of another sex worker, Ms Ware, six months prior, on or around May 7, 2021.

Brown, of Squirrel Close in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, denies both charges of murder.

The trial continues.