A FORMER escort girl told detectives her lover said he had "killed kids before" just moments before she hacked him to death with an axe, a court heard.

Jan Charlton, 36, told interviewing officers Danny O'Brien, formerly of Holmes Terrace, Rawtenstall, had threatened to chop her head off and kill her three-year-old daughter in the bedroom of their luxury home in Midgley, West Yorkshire, a jury at Leeds Crown Court was told.

She told detectives she began a kinky sex session with Mr O'Brien, 40, to try to calm him down and was dressed in just a suspender belt, stockings and rubber gloves.

Her businessman boyfriend then pointed out an axe in an adjoining dressing room.

In the interview read to the court by a police officer, she said Mr O'Brien told her: "Look at that, you're not going anywhere."

Charlton added: "I just didn't know what to do.

"I was in pure panic. I wasn't going upstairs expecting that."

She then described to the officers how her partner then threatened her daughter, Amy. Charlton told the police how she started to play along with him to calm him down and suggested that Amy would perform a sex act with him and then they could kill her. She said: "It wasn't something I was ever going to do. I was just trying to calm him down. He said 'It's all right, I've killed kids before'."

Charlton, who was talking to detectives at a police station in Wakefield about six weeks after Mr O'Brien's death, then said: "He's a dangerous, dangerous man and I knew 100 per cent that he would if he got her. Charlton said she knew she had to do something to save both her and her daughter.

She said she grabbed the axe and hit him on the head with it as he was in a kneeling position. She told detectives: "Then I hit him with it."

Charlton admits killing Mr O'Brien but denies murder, claiming lawful self-defence and provocation.

(Proceeding)