Rhyl builder Anthony Bird, on trial for the murder of his partner Tracy Kearns after finding out that she was having an affair, was  accused of telling “lie after lie” about what had happened on the day she died.

Cross-examined by prosecuting barrister Ian Unsworth QC at Mold Crown Court, Bird agreed that he had tried to act normally after he had strangled his wife and said that he did not know what else to do.

Mr Unsworth said that when she returned home on the Sunday evening  - never to be seen alive again – only the defendant could say what had happened after she entered the door “because she cannot tell us.”

The prosecutor said his account that she left but returned because she had a flat tyre was a figment of his imagination, made up to explain why the vehicle was still there.

He had made up the allegation that she had a scissors and had gone for him, he said

Bird had told the jury in his evidence on Friday that he wanted to get away with it.

Mr Unsworth said: “What did you want to get away with?”

He replied “I don’t know.”

Mr Unsworth: “With killing her?”

Bird: “Yes.”

When Mr Unsworth said that Bird wanted people to think  she had run away, he said that he was not thinking.

But Mr Unsworth said he was thinking – but thinking about himself.

That instinct, that desire, to get away with it was “still burning strong”, said Mr Unsworth.

The prosecutor said the last WhatsApp message purported to be sent by Tracy to the man she was having an affair with spoke of “the weirdness has gone out of his mind.”

Mr Unsworth asked him “Had you demonstrated any weirdness towards Tracy that day? “

He said he had not.

Bird said that he was “a little upset” that she had not arrived home from work earlier in view of what had happened earlier that day – him finding out about the affair.

Asked how he felt when he heard for the first time that they had been having sex together, he said that he was upset but not angry.

A GPS tracking device later found in his vehicle was nothing to do with Tracy, he said.

Mr Unsworth said the defendant had described what happened as a fight.

“This was not a fight between two people,” he said.

“This was an attack by you and the scissors are a figment of your imagination.”

It had, he said, been a “desperate attempt” by Bird to explain what had happened.

Bird denied the claims. He denied that he had “a selective memory” .

Mr Unsworth said that it had not been necessary for him to squeeze her neck with such force to restrain her.

He said he was stopping her from moving and felt that he did not have any other options.

“I was trying to stop her from thrashing,” he said.

Asked if he regretted it, he replied “absolutely yes.”

He was asked why he wanted people to think that Tracy was still alive.

Bird said that he did not know.

Mr Unsworth said that he had sent her a text message to say her tyre had been fixed when she was lying dead in the tree house in the back garden – that he wanted to tell the world that he thought that she was still alive.

He said that her mobile phone had never been used but Bird denied that he had got rid of it, or that he had used it to look at her messages or the Facebook page.

Mr Unsworth asked Bird if he thought he mobile phone would have given clues about where she was?

Bird said: “ I didn’t give her phone a single thought.”

Mr Unsworth accused him of lying and said that in the same way that he destroyed her clothing, he had disposed of her phone and SIM card. Bird denied the claims.

Bird said that he had put her body in the tree house and then removed her clothing around lunchtime on the Monday.

Mr Unsworth asked if it was a priority in his life – 12 to 14 hours after he strangled his partner and at a time when she was lying dead in the tree house – to get a painter and decorator to do a paint job at his home.

“What on earth were you doing asking a painter and decorator to come to your house?”

Bird replied that he did not know.

Asked if he was worried that there may be some sort of forensic trace, a hand mark on a wall for example, he said “no.”

Mr Unsworth said that the defendant had taken a number of steps designed to cover up what had happened and to throw people off the scent.

Bird replied “I believe I did yes” but he did not know why.

Bird, 49, denies the murder of Tracy Kearns, 43, at the home they shared in Cader Avenue in Kinmel Bay, between May 7 and May 11, but accepts that he was responsible for her death after discovering that she was having an affair.