Woman stabs party guest to death, covers bloody walls with paint

A 28-year-old woman named Keegan Barnes allegedly stabbed a friend to death in an inebriated state. She also tried to cover the evidence by painting the blood-splattered walls, and hiding the victim's blood-covered phone under a mattress at her house in Thornaby, North Yorkshire last year.

The revelations about the incident came during the hearing of the case at Teesside Crown Court. The victim, known as Toni Butler, was stabbed in the leg with a kitchen knife by Barnes at a street party on June 10 last year.

Barnes had denied murder charges and claims that she had acted in self-defence and stabbed Butler who later lost her life due to massive blood loss. The court heard that there had already been a "bad feeling," between the two.

The CCTV footage examined by the investigators showed the accused walking to a shop hours after committing the murder and trying to buy a scratch card with Butler's bank card, according to a report in The Sun.

The paramedics were called to the scene only after several hours had passed. They became suspicious when they heard Barnes' friend say: "tell them what really happened."

The ambulance crew discovered that the walls had been freshly painted and there were blood-covered clothes in the washing machine. The crew then called Cleveland Police to the scene.

When the police finally arrived at the crime scene, Barnes said that Toni Butler had attacked her for "no reason," and that she had acted in self-defence.

"She admitted stabbing Miss Butler and asked Amelia (her friend) to get the knife from upstairs and hide it in the garden. She did as she was requested and the defendant tried to conceal it by placing a table over it outside in the garden," Nick Dry, prosecuting, told jurors.

"The post mortem found that Miss Butler had bled to death. A stab wound had caused massive blood loss," he added.

"A laceration to the back of her head was consistent with a fall to the ground; and a laceration to her left eyebrow was possibly caused by broken crockery - which was found at the scene." The trial in the case is ongoing.