A 22-year-old man was shot at with a crossbow, bludgeoned on the head with an axe and stabbed to death before his body was chopped up, put through a mincer and dumped on a landfill site, a court heard yesterday.

Nelvaughn Brade was first shot at with the weapon as he took a shower in the early hours of November 5 last year at the bungalow he shared with male stripper Steven Parton in Perry Barr, Birmingham.

The crossbow missed the lodger's neck and he tried to escape but was eventually "floored" as his 39-year-old housemate rained blows on his head with the axe, Birmingham Crown Court was told.

Parton's girlfriend, Karen Morris, then stabbed Mr Brade in the neck which is thought to have finally killed him.

Morris, of Kitchener Road, Selly Park, Birmingham, denies murder.

But prosecutor Julia Macur QC told the jury the defendant said she should not be convicted of murder but instead be found guilty of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility.

Parton, from College Road, has already pleaded guilty to murder, she said.

The court was told that on November 11 last year, Morris and Parton arrived at Hunstanton police station in Norfolk and appeared "anxious and distressed".

Parton told a Pc that they had "done something very, very bad" and killed Mr Brade and would be wanted by police in Birmingham.

Enquiries later established that Mr Brade was dead and Parton told police they could find his body on a landfill site in nearby Kings Lynn.

Parton went with detectives to the dump and pointed out a skip but some of the plastic bags containing body parts had already been put in the landfill.

"When the landfill was searched, several black bin liners were found," Miss Macur explained.

"The bin liners contained in one, the organs of Nelvaughn Brade - his stomach, his lungs, heart, kidneys and liver - in another, his rib cage and pelvis, and in another, a head, his hands and a foot.

"Another bone that was found to have been part of Nelvaughn Brade's skeleton was found in a different part of the site, removed by animals."

She added: "The flesh had been removed almost completely from his skeleton. It had been minced through a domestic mincer. The flesh was found in two 25 gallon plastic oil drums."

Miss Macur said: "The prosecution case is that Karen Morris murdered Nelvaughn Brade." The case continues.