‘Psychopath with a conscience’ guilty of murdering two escorts in East Sussex six months apart

A builder who described himself as a “psychopath with a conscience” has been found guilty of murdering two escorts in East Sussex six months apart.

Mark Brown killed 33-year-old Leah Ware in May and Alexandra Morgan, 34, at a remote farm near St Leonards in November last year after meeting them through a sex work website, a jury at Hove Crown Court was told.

Brown put Ms Morgan head-first into a home-made incinerator before dumping her remains.

The body of Ms Ware has never been found, but the prosecution believe he used a similar method – as well as also killing her Pomeranian dog, Lady.

The jury of 10 men and two women took 10-and-a-half hours to convict Brown of both murder charges on Thursday.

Brown met Ms Ware in 2018 when he hired her as an escort and they developed an “on again, off again” relationship.

He killed her on or around May 7 last year after tensions grew when she pressed him to leave his partner of 14 years, Lisa Clark, the court heard.

Brown hired Ms Morgan for sex around a dozen times before offering her an escorting job worth £100,000 in October 2021.

But when she visited Little Bridge Farm, the site he rented, the following month, he killed her and burned her body in an incinerator made from an oil drum.

He then dumped her remains in a skip at the building site where he worked in Sevenoaks, Kent.

Brown claimed she died in an accident at the farm after hitting her head when she slipped in his workshop and he burned her body “in a panic”.

He told the jury he and Ms Ware broke up in early 2021 and, as far as he knows, she is still alive.