THE jury was retiring today (Tuesday) to consider the verdict in the trial of Ashley Foster who is alleged to have strangled a Stourbridge teenager during a perverted sex session before sealing her body in a wardrobe covered in clingfilm.

The prosecution has claimed 24-year-old Foster murdered 17-year-old Megan Bills at the hostel where he was staying in Highgate Road, Dudley, just four days after being released from prison.

What may have begun as consensual ended in a violent sex attack, alleged Crispin Aylett QC, who told the jury Megan's death was borne out of some sick sexual activity on his part.

He said that after the killing Foster scoured internet sites looking for "snuff" movies which involved the actual death or the simulation of death by a victim.

Foster, of no fixed address, has denied murdering Megan who was a former student at Ridgewood High School in Stourbridge before qualifying as a hairdresser at college in Dudley and Halesowen.

In a letter to his mother he maintained the teenager told him she liked to be strangled - adding: "I strangled her and she loved it."

He said he left her on his bed in his room at the hostel and after returning the day after to find her dead he panicked, put her body in the wardrobe and sealed it closed.

The body of the homeless teenager was found nearly three weeks later by staff at the hostel when they investigated a revolting smell coming from the room.

Foster opted not to give evidence to the jury at the end of the prosecution case having stressed to police that what happened was a pure accident.

Judge James Burbidge QC was due to conclude his summing up of the case on Tuesday morning before the six-man six-woman jury retires to consider the evidence.