THE man accused of the murder of Heather Barnett hugged her children to comfort them – moments after they found her mutilated body, Winchester Crown Court heard yesterday.

Danilo Restivo, 39, pulled up outside the murder scene in Capstone Road, Bournemouth, as the two youngsters ran screaming and sobbing into the street.

Minutes earlier, at around 4pm, they had returned from Summerbee School to discover their mum lying dead on the bathroom floor of their ground floor flat.

Restivo and his then girlfriend, now wife, Fiamma Marsango, took the children, Terry 14, and Caitlin, 11, into their house in Chatsworth Road, directly opposite, while they waited for the police to arrive.

Italian national Restivo denies the murder of Heather Barnett on November 12, 2002.

Outlining the case for the prosecution, Michael Bowes QC said the murder of Heather and that of Elisa Claps in Italy nine years earlier were so “dramatically and strikingly similar” they could only have been carried out by the same man.

That person was Danilo Restivo, said Mr Bowes.

He told the jury: “You can have no doubt that both of the killings must have been the work of one person.”

He added: “There is compelling evidence to prove that Danilo Restivo murdered Elisa Claps, which will be explained to you later. The presence of cut hair after death in both cases together with other features relating to the clothing of both victims is strikingly similar and is akin to a hallmark.”

The jury of seven men and five women heard how Heather drove her two children to the school at 8.30am and returned home less than ten minutes later.

They were shown CCTV footage of Heather’s white car returning from the school run.

Mr Bowes said the details of Heather’s death were “harrowing”

and warned jurors may find some of it distressing.

He said they would hear how Heather had been struck over the head 10 times with a blunt instrument possibly a hammer, capable of delivering high impact energy.

Her throat had been cut from ear to ear and her breasts cut off and placed by the side of her head. A clump of someone else’s light brown cut hair had been placed in her right hand, which had been rested on her lower abdomen, Mr Bowes told the court.

In Heather’s left hand there were approximately 30 hairs, which appeared to have been cut from her own head, he added.

Mr Bowes said: “Heather Barnett was murdered and her body mutilated after death.”

Mr Bowes said Elisa Claps had disappeared in her home town of Potenza, Italy, on September 12, 1993. Her body was not discovered until March last year when it was found by workmen in the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Potenza. Elisa Claps’ mother Filomena sat in the court listening to the trial opening just a few feet from Restivo in the dock.

Members of Heather Barnett’s family were also in the public gallery.

Mr Bowes said: “It is the prosecution’s case that Heather Barnett’s murder was premeditated and that her killer was wearing gloves and changed his trainers at the scene in order to avoid forensic contamination.

“It is also likely he was wearing some form of overclothing to protect himself and that he brought with him the blunt instrument used to kill her and the knife used to mutilate her and cut her hair.”

The court heard Restivo had a fetish for cutting women’s hair on buses without their consent – with 15 reported cases in Bournemouth, mainly in Winton and a further nine in Italy, before he came to live in the UK in 2002.

Mr Bowes said other crucial evidence in the prosecution’s case would centre on a green towel found in Heather’s flat which had a partial DNA match to Restivo – the probability of it coming from someone else and unrelated to Restivo was one in 57,000.

The jury, he said, would also hear evidence of a pair of Nike trainers which Restivo soaked in bleach in the bath in the days after the killing.

Mr Bowes claimed that in statements to the police at various times, Restivo had told “lie upon ridiculous lie”.

The trial continues.