“I HAD to do what was right.”

Those are the words of a Hampshire mum who told police that her friend allegedly confessed to murdering Pennie Davis hours after she was found stabbed to death, a court heard.

Against the advice of others and despite fearing for her own safety, Winchester Crown Court heard Natasha Brook went to officers to tell them that her friend of about 15 years, Justin Robertson, had confessed to her.

Jurors watched a video interview of the 30-year-old telling police how Robertson had visited her Holbury home and told her that he had done “something stupid”, on September 2 last year.

Robertson, 36, is charged with murdering 47-year-old supermarket worker Pennie, while he, Benjamin Carr, 22, and Samantha Maclean, 28, are all charged with conspiracy to kill her. They all deny the charges.

Mum-of-two Miss Brook said she first thought that Robertson was joking because he had a “sick and twisted sense of humour” and because he was “calm and collected”.

She said: “He said that he had done something stupid.”

She added: “I said ‘it can’t be that bad’ and he said he had killed someone.”

She told police that he then picked up a knife in her kitchen and told her that the knife he had used was a similar size. It wasn’t until the next day that Miss Brook found out about Pennie’s murder, the court heard, after friends shared a Daily Echo story online.

She said: “I started to shake and I couldn’t breathe. All that kept running through my head was that he had actually done it and he told me.”

The court was told that Miss Brook contacted police two days later, telling officers that she had signed her own “death warrant” by speaking to them.

She told police that she feared Robertson would kill her, and she felt like a prisoner in her own home.

She added: “A woman had lost her life and I needed to stand up for her and the way I thought about it was, if it was me that had been killed and somebody had been told, I would want them to stand up for me and my family.

“So I am doing it for them, no matter what the risk is for me.”

Under cross-examination, Robertson’s barrister Rupert Pardoe suggested the reason that she waited so long to tell police was because the confession never happened, she was lying and she and Robertson had actually argued about cannabis plants that he had left at her house.

An emotional Miss Brook denied lying and said: “What I am doing here today is telling the truth.”

She added: “It replays in my head every single day.”

Proceeding.