THE defence case in the Heather Barnett murder trial is now likely to start next week.

It was due to start today but Mr Justice Burnett said the delay was nobody’s fault and “entirely unavoidable.” Prosecution has resumed.

The trial is now in its fifth week at Winchester Crown Court and is expected to continue into next week.

Italian national Danilo Restivo, 39, of Chatsworth Road, Charminster, is accused of murdering the mum-of-two on November 12, 2002. He denies the charge.

Heather’s body was discovered in her ground floor flat in Capstone Road, Charminster, by her children Terry, then 14, and Caitlin, then 11, when they returned home from school.

She had been hit over the head with a hammer-type object. Both her breasts had been removed and a clump of someone else’s cut hair was placed in her right hand and strands of her own cut hair had been placed under her left hand, the court has heard.

Prosecutor Michael Bowes QC has claimed the deaths of Heather and 16-year-old Italian schoolgirl Elisa Claps are so “strikingly similar” that only one man could be responsible.

Elisa disappeared from her home town of Potenza in Italy on September 12, 1993. Her remains were discovered in the loft of the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Potenza in March last year.

The court has heard Restivo claimed he met Elisa at the church on the day she disappeared but she left before him alive and well.

Restivo is represented by David Jeremy QC.