A volunteer coastguard is on trial at Plymouth Crown Court accused of murdering his live-in partner and then staging an elaborate cover-up to make her death look like suicide. Prosecutors allege that Rowan Sutton, 31, deliberately ran over Aimee Pike, 22, in the dark countryside before moving her body in a second car to a main road, where he attempted to fake her taking her own life. The case matters as a serious murder prosecution centring on alleged coercive control and a calculated attempt to deceive investigators.

The jury heard that Sutton, described as "controlling and coercive" and prone to "bouts of intense anger", allegedly placed Ms Pike's body on a low wall at around 4am and waited for a bakery van to pass, which he filmed, before staging a fake one-sided conversation in which he begged her not to "do it". Prosecutor James Dawes KC said the couple were separating after five years together but that Sutton feared losing access to their child, and had spread false rumours to her family and his coastguard colleagues that she was suicidal and struggling with her mental health. Despite having split up four weeks earlier, the pair were still living together in the same flat when Ms Pike died.