Nathan Owens on trial for murdering stepdaughter Carla Georgescu in Preston

Left · 2Nathan Owens, 34, is on trial at Preston Crown Court accused of murdering his 19-year-old stepdaughter, Carla Georgescu, at her student halls in Preston on 4 February this year. 1 2 Left · 2Owens denies murder, strangulation and GBH, and the trial continues. 1 2 Left · 2The court has been shown footage of Georgescu, in a dressing gown and pyjamas, letting Owens into her accommodation in the early hours of 4 February; he is recorded leaving about 90 minutes later with his head and face hidden. 1 2

Left · 2Prosecutor Nicholas Lumley KC told jurors Georgescu had been beaten about the head, stabbed to the face, with the blade connecting with her hands as she tried to defend herself, then strangled with at least a belt and suspended from a wardrobe handle, and that there had been some form of grievous sexual activity. 1 2 Left · 1The prosecution says Owens had a sexual obsession with his stepdaughter and may have acted because she was due to fly to Romania the next day and was planning to meet a new boyfriend. 1 Left · 2Jurors heard that Owens' devices showed he transferred 14,417 still and moving images to a laptop two weeks before the killing, most of them pornographic but including hundreds of Georgescu at home in underwear or short pyjamas, and that he made deepfakes of her face on explicit images and filmed himself having sex with an effigy wearing her clothes. 1 2

Left · 2The court heard Owens drove back to his home in Hartlepool, throwing away items including bedding bearing her DNA; his wife, Georgescu's mother Janina Georgescu, told police she did not know he had left the house, as he usually stayed up all night gaming. 1 2 Left · 2Janina Georgescu became worried the next day, which would have been her daughter's 20th birthday, when Carla did not reply to messages, and called police, who found the body; officers first thought it was suicide before noticing suspicious injuries. 1 2 Left · 1Jurors have also seen footage of Owens being arrested at home on suspicion of murder. 1