Sex game trial: ignore 'deviance', jury told

Love cheat Jason O’Malley is alleged to have strangled his girlfriend Kerry Sneddon during a kinky sex session as her baby slept upstairs at their Rotherham home before claiming he had lost his memory.

House husband O'Malley (40)—who was having affairs with three women, including Kerry, at the same time—claimed that the mother of two liked him to squeeze her throat during sex, although he could not remember if he did so that night.

But his barrister, Mr Simon Bourne-Arton QC, told the jury in his closing speech at Sheffield Crown Court to “put aside” what they might regard as sexual deviance or inappropriate behaviour.

"You have to judge the facts of the case on the evidence and not on what you think about the defendant,” Mr Bourne-Arton said.

The jury is expected to retire to consider its verdict next week, with Judge Michael Murphy QC due to beginning summing up next Tuesday.

Giving evidence, twice-married O’Malley, who denies murder, described the couple’s last moments together.

He claimed that he and Kerry chinked glasses to toast their forthcoming marriage before having sex on the floor of their living room in Rotherham.

He and Kerry both drank about six or seven cans of lager and had started on a bottle of wine, he said.

“We started kissing and taking each other’s clothes off and had sex,” O’Malley told the jury.

But O’Malley claimed that he could remember nothing after starting to have sex.

Kerry’s naked body was later found strangled with a ligature at their home in Whybourne Grove last November.

Police found O’Malley on the stairs with a cotton belt around his neck.

Prosecution allege that O’Malley was unhappy because Kerry did not leave work promptly and that he throttled her after an argument.

O’Malley told the jury that Kerry liked him to squeeze her throat during sex to improve her orgasm and she would tap him on the side to release her.

But he could not recall if he had done so on the night she died.

He said that previously during sex games Kerry had tied him to the bed frame a few times and also hit him with a “smacking paddle” but they had never used a ligature.

Unemployed chauffeur O’Malley denied that his amnesia was a “sham” to conceal what he had done.

He said that sex was important to him and detailed how he left his second wife when he became sexually involved with Ms Sneddon after they had chatted on the “Mingleville” network site.

O’Malley admitted that he had cheated on his two previous wives on several occasions and that he had also cheated on Ms Sneddon with another woman, Lisa Harrison, whom he also met on the same website.

He said that he had struck up the relationship and also had sex with his second wife on one occasion when he remained at home while Ms Sneddon was on a week’s holiday in Turkey with her two young children.

Lisa Harrison became pregnant and later gave birth to his baby, he said.

The trial continues.