THE man on trial for battering and stamping Siobhan Kelly to death has confessed to her murder.

Ms Kelly was found dead in her flat on Kendall Court off Tudor Road in Crystal Palace in February last year.

Stephen Foad, 42, had admitted visiting the 39-year-old on the last night she was seen alive, but said she was alive when he left her home.

Two days into his Old Bailey murder trial he tried to self harm, and said he wanted to change his plea to guilty.

Judge Richard Hone QC jailed him for life with a minimum of 13 years in custody.

At the start of the trial, the Old Bailey jury was told Ms Kelly was an unemployed alcoholic, who was known to befriend elderly and unattractive men and take them home with her so they would buy her alcohol.

However, in the weeks before her death she had been trying to turn her life around, and was attending Alcohol Anonymous meetings.

Ms Kelly was last seen alive on the morning of January 15 last year, but later that evening Foad was captured on CCTV buying three cans of Special Brew at a local off licence.

Neighbours heard banging noises and a male voice shouting coming from Ms Kelly’s flat at about 10pm.

One of them heard the man saying, ‘Stop moaning, it was just a punch in the face’, and ‘If you don’t stop moaning I will keep doing it’.

From January 16 every call made to Ms Kelly’s mobile went to voicemail, the court heard.

The police forced entry to her home on February 7, after one of her cousins had been to the flat to check on her.

Police found blood spattered around the living room and bedroom, the jury were told, and Ms Kelly’s body was found wrapped in a duvet.

Tests showed she had suffered fractured ribs and bleeding and bruising to her brain, and experts believed she had been dead for about three weeks.

Scientists found Foad’s fingerprints on a broken bloodstained candle, and linked him to a bloody palm-print on the bedroom wall and footprints left on Ms Kelly’s jeans.

Foad was arrested on February 22, and said to officers: ‘So I’m the only suspect for this then?’

He admitted during his interview that Ms Kelly had hit her head on a bedside table during a drunken row, but denied he was responsible for her death.

“I just tried pushing her away,” he told police.

“I kind of grabbed hold of her and she fell down, and she hit her head on the small cabinet. She had blood coming from the side of her head.”

Foad, of Foxhill Lane in Upper Norwood, said he could not remember picking up a candle, and denied hitting Ms Kelly with the lamp.

But forensic examination of her flat proved Ms Kelly had been repeatedly hit in the living room before being dragged into the bedroom.

The jury was told repeated blows to Ms Kelly’s head, with fists and with a large red candle, had caused damage to her brain, while the injuries to her ribs were consistent with being stamped on.