Zakk Sacket: ‘I thought Jessie Wright was pretending to be dead... I was really scared’

Published: 31st March, 2011
by DAVID ST GEORGE

THE man accused of raping and throttling Somers Town convent schoolgirl Jessie Wright in a sex frenzy told a jury yesterday (Wednesday): “I’m not responsible for any crime. We were good friends.”

As “angel Jessie” lay dying he suspected she was playacting, he told the court.

Unemployed Zakk Sacket claimed at the Old Bailey during the second week of his murder trial that he had been “mucking around” with 16-year-old Jessie before having consensual sex with her.

But when he told her he was leaving to go home she became angry and abusive, he said.

Sacket, 20, told jurors: “I grabbed her in a headlock around the neck but not to cause any harm. 

“I don’t know how long I was holding her. As I let go she dropped to the floor. I thought she had just fainted or was pretending to be dead.”

He went on: “I was thinking she was messing about.”

Sacket maintained he tried to bring her round with the kiss of life. “I’d seen it on Holby City and Casualty,” he said. 

But when his efforts failed to revive her he got “really scared” and decided to hide her. “I didn’t think she was dead,” he claimed.

A self-confessed prolific motor bike and scooter thief, Sacket was in the parking area of the flats in Outram Place, York Way, late at night in March last year when Jessie suffered fatal injuries.

Jessie, whose school was in Phoenix Road, Somers Town, lived with her grandmother on the nearby Bemerton estate.

Sacket, an orphan with a low IQ and learning difficulties, said he carried Jessie’s body to a gated area where he left her. 

It was behind a gate where he and his mates “stored” bikes they had stolen.

That day, he said, he was “stoned” on skunk cannabis. 

CCTV showed him and Jessie with a motor scooter. Jessie was riding it and Sacket, under a driving ban at the time after several court appearances, said he kicked the machine “for a laugh” – causing Jessie to tumble and hit her head on a parked car.

Described as “thick” by witnesses, Sacket has been interviewed by psychiatrists, the court heard.

Earlier, a pathologist gave Jessie’s cause of death as “compression of the neck” and he explained to jurors that her brain had been starved of oxygen.

The doctor said he was “unable to find” any injury to show a sexual assault on her.

Defence QC Jeremy Dein told the court that Sacket “would have done anything” for Jessie and that, despite earlier evidence, they were good friends. 

“He would not and could not have harmed her,” he said.

The QC maintained that Jessie had been “only too keen” to have sex with Sacket and that they had been lovers on a previous occasion.

“It is accepted that he killed her. But there is a world of difference between accidental death and murder,” Mr Dein argued.

Sacket, who denied a murder charge, admitted he lied when he initially told police that he was not in the area when Jessie died. 

He said he was with friends watching a football match on TV.

The trial continues.