Teen killer strangled girlfriend to death minutes after her chilling call to mum
A teenager who strangled his girlfriend to death at their flat is facing life behind bars after being found guilty of her murder.
Liam Cain denied murdering girlfriend Courtney Boorne, but was convicted on Wednesday after a jury spent just one hour and nine minutes to reach their verdict.
Ms Boorne, 20, was found unresponsive at the flat she shared with Cain in Kirkby, Merseyside, two days before Christmas last year, the Liverpool ECHO reports.
The support worker had made a gut-wrenching plea to her mother on the afternoon of her death, telling her during a phone call to contact police "if she didn't hear from her within an hour", saying "something was going on".
Ms Boorne's family were seen crying and embracing one another in the public gallery on Wednesday as the unanimous verdict was delivered. Cain meanwhile remained emotionless in the dock, and will be sentenced on Friday for the murder.
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Courtney was heard screaming for help (Liverpool Echo)During the course of the trial it was heard how an hour after Ms Boorne's phone call, a neighbour saw what was described as a woman in the opposite flat "screaming and climbing onto the window ledge".
Gordon Cole KC, prosecuting, told Liverpool Crown court during Cain's trial how the witness "appeared to be shouting at someone inside the flat".
"Courtney Boorne was heard to shout 'please'. She was crying and she was shouting, 'he has all the doors locked and he won't let me out'."
Another witness also called the police to "report a female shouting out of the window, screaming, shouting 'call the police, he's choking me'".
Mr Cole said: "She was described by as screaming, and the window was then closed. What they couldn't see, of course, was what was going on inside the flat. The only two people inside the flat were Courtney Boorne and this defendant."
Police found Courtney unresponsive in the flat (Liverpool Echo)Officers then attended the 14th-storey property "very quickly" and had to force entry upon their arrival shortly before 5pm. They discovered Ms Boorne unconscious on a bed in the bedroom with "visible marks to her neck".
She was rushed to Aintree University Hospital, but was pronounced dead at 7:02pm. A post-mortem investigation later found that she had suffered a cardiac arrest "because of the asphyxia, the strangulation, the smothering of her by this defendant".
Mr Cain was arrested after being found "crouched down, leaning on an armchair in the living room" with "scratch marks" on his head and face. The court heard he had sent his dad a text saying: "I love you the world, everyone.
Mr Cain denied murder, maintaining that he acted in "reasonable self-defence" after Ms Boorne allegedly attacked him with a plant pot, a brush and a kitchen knife, apparently angered by a series of phone calls he had received from an unknown number.
However records showed no such contact on the killer's mobile, while the objects he claimed to have been assaulted with were found in positions which contradicted his account.
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Following Wednesday's verdict Detective Inspector Laura Lamping, of Merseyside Police, said: "This was a truly shocking and brutal murder of Courtney Boorne in her own home. As the court heard, her tragic death and the domestic violence she endured was abhorrent.
"Nobody can begin to understand the impact her sudden death has had on her family and friends, but I hope that this conviction will give Courtney’s family a sense of justice."
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