CCTV footage released: Dismembered body of EastEnders actress Gemma McCluskie dragged into taxi by brother
The defendant dragging a large bag into the boot of a taxi. - Credit: Archant
The brother of EastEnders actress Gemma McCluskie told jurors it was like a ‘nightmare’ when he realised he had killed his sister.
Window cleaner Tony McCluskie, 35, claims he cannot remember attacking the 29-year old barmaid who worked in Kingsland Road, Dalston, cutting up her body into six pieces and dumping her in the Regent’s Canal, by London Fields.
He said he genuinely thought she was missing and thought it was a ‘sick joke’ when police charged him with murder.
McCluskie said: “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, it was some sort of sick joke. I couldn’t get my head round it.”
A month later he was re interviewed and shown CCTV footage of him taking the suitcase containing Gemma’s body to the canal on March 2.
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But it was only six months after the killing that he indicated to the court that he accepted responsibility for his sister’s death.
In cross-examination, prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC suggested he was a ‘cunning liar’.
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Mr Aylett said: “For all you can remember, somebody else could have come to your house, killed Gemma, chopped her up and then dumped her in the canal?”
McCluskie replied: “I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened. I don’t know. I accept responsibility from the evidence I have been shown.”
Mr Aylett continued: “Or have you simply done your best to meet the overwhelming evidence of your involvement but tried to wriggle out of your ultimate responsibility for her murder?”
McCluskie says his last memory is of Gemma picking up a knife during a blazing row about him flooding the bathroom at their home in Shoreditch, east London, on March 1 last year.
McCluskie, who was sharing a flat in Pelter Street, Shoreditch, east London, with his sister admits manslaughter but denies murder.
The Old Bailey trial continues.
