A FORMER girlfriend of the defendant in a murder and attempted murder trial has told a jury he attacked her with a knife.

David Kilcullen is accused of killing 59-year-old Gerry Edwards and attempting to kill his partner Chris Bevan, 57, at their apartment in Page Heath Villas, Bickley, on March 3.

The 46-year-old, of The Avenue in Bickley, denies the charges, claiming he stabbed the couple in self-defence after they sexually assaulted him.

This afternoon a former girlfriend of Kilcullen, with whom he has a 10-year-old son, told a jury at the Old Bailey that he broke into her home and assaulted her on March 23, 2004.

She said that after arguing with Kilcullen at his flat she had gone home, where she lived with her two young children, and gone to bed.

She said: “The first I knew David was in my house was when he was standing in my bedroom doorway with a knife in his hand.

“He switched on the light and came over to me and tried to put the knife into me.

“I held the duvets over my head and he stabbed through the duvet, hitting my elbow.

“It was a kitchen knife. He said if he could not have me, no-one would have me.”

The woman told the jury Kilcullen then tied her wrists together with a tie and led her downstairs into the kitchen, where she saw the window he had smashed to access the house.

She said he made her swallow a necklace, which he had bought her months before, with a gulp of vodka from a half empty bottle on the sideboard in the kitchen.

He tried to make her swallow earrings he had also bought her, but she could not, so he stamped on them, she said.

She continued: “We went into the living room where he kicked me and hit me and made me take my dressing gown off and pose in sexual poses.”

Kilcullen kept her captive in the house for around three hours and she only managed to escape to call the police after he went upstairs when her children awoke.

Kilcullen was jailed for four years after pleading guilty to charges of false imprisonment and putting a person in fear of violence by harassment in relation to the incident.

Sobbing in court, the woman told the jury: “He was not the person I thought I knew.

“I have not felt safe in my home since.”

Kilcullen is accused of stabbing Mr Edwards and Mr Bevan after forcing his way into their home.

He claims Mr Edwards invited him into the flat where he fell asleep, and when he awoke he found Mr Edwards and Mr Bevan performing a sex act on him.

Mr Edwards was stabbed four times and died as a result of one of the wounds, which went through his sternum and into his heart. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene of the attack.

Mr Bevan spent months in hospital in a critical condition after suffering multiple stab wounds to his scalp, face and chest, and has still not made a full recovery.

The trial continues.