Roy Helm

Roy Helm was beaten to death at a flat.

He was found dead at his flat on 12 August 2006 at 1.45pm when an ambulance was called, 12 hours after the attack.

A man was tried for his murder but acquitted after he blamed his girlfriend. He was said to have attacked, punched, kicked and stamped on Roy Helm because Roy Helm had called his girlfriend (Roy Helm's ex-girlfriend) a slag.

Roy Helm had 20 rib fractures, a damaged liver and a ruptured kidney.

A former partner of Roy Helm's said that she had seen him headbutting and punching Roy Helm five times, saying that Roy Helm had called her a slag. However, the defence said that the sort of attack that the woman had described would not have caused the injuries that had killed him. He then said that if it wasn't the man that was on trial that had caused the injuries to Roy Helm then it would have been her. The defence noted she had once threatened to break all the ribs in Roy Helm's body. The defence said that it had been Roy Helm's ex-partner that had 'kicked Roy Helm in the groin, put him in a headlock, kicked him in the face and most significantly, repeatedly stamped on his upper body'. However, she denied that.

The man tried was a martial arts expert and had been in Tae Kwon Do competitions.

Roy Helm's girlfriend said that Roy Helm was lifeless and a bit waxy the day after the assault.

Roy Helm had been at the flat with his girlfriend as well as the man that was tried and his girlfriend (Roy Helm's ex-girlfriend with whom he had remained friends). The man tried and his girlfriend were said to have been on a 48-hour drinking binge before they arrived at the flat. Roy Helm's ex-girlfriend said that Roy Helm was really drunk and that he had gone into his kitchen and that when he came out he was staggering and then scooted across the floor and bust his face. She said that after that the man on trial hit him. She said that there was a rain of blows and that he had kicked him as well. When she described the kick she had said that it was a hard kick like the way you would kick a football. She said that since she had broken up with Roy Helm he had sent her horrible text messages which her new boyfriend had read and that he had called her a slag in front of her two children. She said that the man on trial kept telling Roy Helm to say sorry to her. She said that Roy Helm kept sating sorry to the man and that the man then lifted his head up by his hair and put it next to his ex-girlfriend’s face and told him to say sorry to her. She said that after the attack Roy Helm crawled into the hallway. After the attack, Roy Helm's ex-girlfriend and the man on trial had sex on the sofa. The ex-girlfriend said that she asked her boyfriend whether he thought that Roy Helm might press charges because of the bruising and said that her boyfriend said that there wouldn’t be any bruising as he had been hitting him in his vital organs and then started talking about the Tae Kwon Do thing.

The next morning his girlfriend went out to the shop leaving Roy Helm lying on the bedroom floor. She said that she thought that he was sleeping off his hangover.

The man in trial and his girlfriend then cleaned up the blood in the flat and then went out to a pub in Cowley.

Roy Helm was a window cleaner.