A rejected man murdered his love rival and then set fire to a car with the victim's body inside to make it look like suicide, a court has heard.
'Obsessive' Mark Chilman, 52, is accused of killing Neil Parkinson, 66, who was discovered after police were called to a lay-by in Ankerdine Road, near the village of Cotheridge, Worcestershire, at 10.30pm on December 12, 2020.
Mr Parkinson, of Clifton upon Teme, Worcestershire, was pronounced dead at the scene amid the torched wreckage of his BMW X5 4x4.
Prosecutors say Chilman made 'plans to kill Mr Parkinson, to make it appear he had committed suicide' in order to 'engineer a reconciliation with the woman he could not bear to see rejecting him'.
'Obsessive' Mark Chilman, 52, is accused of killing Neil Parkinson (pictured), 66, who was discovered after police were called to a lay-by in Ankerdine Road, near the village of Cotheridge, Worcestershire, at 10.30pm on December 12, 2020
Chilman had been broken up with in June 2020 by a woman called Juliet Adcock, who went on to have a relationship with Mr Parkinson.
Opening the case at Worcester Crown Court on Monday, Mark Heywood QC, said: 'At around 10.30pm, people who live nearby to that lay-by noticed the glow of a fire coming from it.
'When the fire officers were able to see into the car, they found the body of a man, subsequently identified as Neil Parkinson, was in the driver's seat of that burning car.
'The evidence gathered in the investigation into how Mr Parkinson met his death that night demonstrates he was murdered, we say by this defendant, Mark Chilman, who had arranged the body in the car and set light to it to make it appear as though Mr Parkinson had killed himself.'
He added that, in June 2020, Chilman's long-term girlfriend, Ms Adcock, 'had ended a long and - for her part - often unhappy relationship with Mr Chilman'.
Mr Parkinson, of Clifton upon Teme, Worcestershire, was pronounced dead at the scene amid the torched wreckage of his BMW X5 4x4. Pictured: Police at the scene
Mr Heywood went on: 'Rather than accept the reality, Mr Chilman continued to find pretexts to continue to have contact with her but he was also obsessively concerned with what she was doing.'
The jury was told that Chilman first got to know mother-of-three Ms Adcock after helping out at the farm in Bromyard, Herefordshire, where she previously lived, following her divorce.
Ms Adcock later described their relationship, which the court heard had started some time before 2014, as 'muddling along', as they moved to a new, smaller farm near the
