A jury has been asked to use “common sense” when weighing up “differing accounts” given by a man accused of murdering two young women and burning their bodies.

Mark Brown is on trial for the alleged murders of Alexandra Morgan, 34, from Sissinghurst, and Leah Ware, 33, from Hastings, who he met through the same adult service website. He denies both charges.

Ms Morgan, a mum-of-two, was last seen at a petrol station in Cranbrook on Remembrance Day last year.

After a large-scale search, her charred remains – including bones and tooth fragments – were discovered at a building site in Sevenoaks where Brown worked.

Brown, a 41-year-old labourer and part-time security guard, admits destroying Ms Morgan's body in an oil drum blaze "in a panic" but claims it was an accident and denies her killing at Little Bridge Farm, East Sussex on November 14, 2021.

The prosecution alleges it is the same method used to dispose of a second woman, Leah Ware, who Brown is also accused of murdering just six months prior at the same location.

Ms Ware has been missing since May 2021 but despite extensive police inquiries home and abroad she has never been found.

A jury of 10 men and two women has been listening to evidence in the trial since October 18 at Hove Crown Court and is expected to retire to deliberate on its verdicts later this week.

Prosecuting counsel Duncan Atkinson KC asked jurors during his closing address today to apply “common sense” and their “knowledge of human nature” when considering their verdicts.

The court heard previously that Brown’s relationship with Ms Ware, with whom he had an “on-off” relationship from 2018 until May 2021, had soured – although the pair hooked up again during a security gig at the Mecca Bingo in Ashford in April last year.

Mr Atkinson KC invited jurors to draw their own conclusions about whether Mrs Ware was still alive on the basis of the “medical, financial and phone [cell site]” evidence presented to the court and the abrupt end of contact with family and friends.

It comes after one friend told the court the mum-of-three, who had become increasingly frustrated by her relationship with Brown, had become a “virtual prisoner” and was being treated as a “secret mistress”.

"If he was concerned about her he would have reported her as missing to the police...”

Brown denies being controlling towards her and says he does not know where Ms Ware is.

But Mr Atkinson KC told the court: “His messages showed he carried on with car-related activity as if nothing had happened, the same as he did within hours of Alex Morgan’s death.

“Do you just carry on working on cars as the defendant said he did?

“Or do you try and find the person who says they have disappeared and who you have concerns about. If he was concerned about her he would have reported her as missing to the police.”

In the months following her last public sighting, Brown continued to collect Ms Ware’s medication for depression and anxiety from a Lloyds pharmacy near his home and a stash of her prescriptions were later located in the footwell of his van, the court heard.

Jurors were also told how Brown continued to manage her finances and made repeat withdrawals from her bank accounts using cards belonging to Ms Ware, which had been redirected to his sister's address.

The prosecution alleges this is part of a "false trail" to create the "untrue" narrative Ms Ware is still alive.

Brown accepted when on the stand earlier in the trial he had given “differing accounts” to different people as to where Ms Ware was after the prosecution alleged he killed her in May 2021.

The part-time security guard told different people Ms Ware had been “sectioned”, sent to “a mental hospital” or had “killed herself”, referring to her in the past tense in exchanges with an old school friend who he told she was now “at peace”.

Brown told the court under cross-examination it had simply been a way to shut down difficult conversations, admitting he was not good with sharing emotions.

But Mr Atkinson today invited jurors to dismiss this account, adding if he didn’t want to talk about it he needn’t have volunteered the information.

He told the court Brown had told a “great edifice of lies” to various people and had intended to distract and “re-explain her whereabouts”.

Mr Atkinson then turned to the death of escort Ms Morgan, from Sissinghurst, who had arranged to meet Brown at his rented farm building near Hastings on November 14.

He had offered to help facilitate "web cam" work for Ms Morgan at a seafront hotel in Brighton through a contact and she was promised £100,000 for a job in addition to him enlisting her services at his yard earlier that morning.

Brown, who was in the witness box for six days, claims Ms Morgan slipped and fell on a tool or piece of mechanical equipment before hitting her head and bleeding out on the workshop floor.

“It is a picture of the one person, whether in anger or cold blood, who has caused each of these women serious harm..."

In a panic, he says he burnt her body, putting her head first in an oil drum before disposing of her remains as he feared no one would believe him.

But Mr Atkinson told jurors: “Alex Morgan had found out, as she had feared, the promise of £100,000 was simply too good to be true.

“The result of deliberate action at a time when the defendant was alone with them and in each case wanted them to be dead and took the necessary steps, as he so often did, to get what he wanted.”

Mr Atkinson also made reference to what the prosecution believes to be an “anxious and unguarded” moment in which Brown told his boss Alan Downs he was going to be arrested for murder.

As the sixth week of the trial got under way, Mr Atkinson concluded his address by asking that jurors carry out a “cool, calm assessment” and to look at the “pieces of the jigsaw not singularly but together” .

“It is a picture of the one person, whether in anger or cold blood, who has caused each of these women serious harm.

“The one person for whom the timing, location and the destruction and fabrication of evidence and the illogical and inconsistent accounts given could have been of benefit.”

This afternoon, defence counsel for Brown, Ian Henderson KC, set out the start of his closing speech.

He warned jurors of the “danger of confirmation bias” and invited them to approach each bit of evidence “openly and fairly” and to dismiss “soundbites and theories”.

“You are a juror and not a detective,” he said. “Please remember it is you who decides the fact, not the Crown and not the defence.

“Just because the Crown suggests it doesn’t make it so. The evidence does.”

He invited the jury to dismiss the prosecution's “recycled” case that Brown feared he would be stopped from seeing his children as a motive for the alleged killing of Ms Ware.

Mr Henderson went on to invite the jury to carefully consider “circumstantial evidence” including cell site data and unconfirmed sightings of Ms Ware since her disappearance and draw “common sense conclusions”.

Turning to the alleged murder of Ms Morgan, he said: “We respectfully suggest there is simply no evidence of any issue, problems or bad blood between them.

“None of the material identified any issue, any argument, any fight and bad blood which suggested there was a problem between them.”

Mr Henderson also discussed the defendant’s use of pornography, escorts and drugs and asked that the jury cast aside any “residual discomfort” when assessing evidence if it was on a moral rather than legal basis.

Brown, of Squirrel Close in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, denies the murder of both Alexandra Morgan and Leah Ware.