Daniel Gibbons wanted to die after Hollie Green was killed

Taking the stand in his own defence Daniel Gibbons, 21, told Winchester Crown Court how he felt when he was formally told by police officers that he had strangled Hollie to death at her Southampton home.

He said: “When you wake up and you are coming around and somebody tells you that the love of your life is dead and it is because of you, it is the worst feeling in the world. All I wanted to do was just die there and then.”

The jury was told how Gibbons, a carpenter, had admitted manslaughter but denied Hollie’s murder.

The court heard details of their relationship in the months before and the days leading up to the night she died in the early hours of August 31.

Dressed in a black suit and tie, Gibbons described how the couple had split up after Hollie accused him of cheating on her with another girl, which he denied.

However, he said he had agreed to move out of the flat they shared while they worked things out.

Eventually, he claimed, Hollie had started to believe him that nothing had happened and they had set a date for him to move back in, after the pair had gone on separate holidays with their friends in July last year.

But on Gibbons’ return from his trip with friends from football, pictures were posted on a social networking site of him kissing another girl.

Gibbons admitted Hollie had been “angry and hurt” when she saw the photos, but that he assured her it was just “a stupid dare” that he regretted. He said after that Hollie, an optician, was giving him “mixed messages” about whether she would take him back.

He said that he had stayed over at the flat a number of times while they had been separated but that Hollie, 21, appeared to be hostile towards him when she was in the company of her friends.

“When it was just us, things seemed to be fine,” he said.

He was then asked about his 21st birthday celebrations in August by defence counsel Jane Miller QC.

He explained that Hollie had been invited to a family meal in the week before she died and that her card and present had upset him, causing him to leave the meal. “My head was all over the place,” he added.

Gibbons, of Redbridge Hill, Redbridge, struggled to read aloud to the court the messages from birthday cards sent by Hollie, which she signed “all my love, Hollie”.

Proceeding.