Pub chef guilty of murdering ex despite her body never being found

11 December 2023 , 15:21

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Claire Holland's body has never been found (Image: Avon and Somerset Police)

A pub chef accused of murdering his ex-partner after blaming her for their child being taken into care, despite her body never being found, has been found guilty.

Claire Holland has not been seen for more than 10 years since she was spotted leaving a pub in the centre of Bristol in June 2012. Despite extensive police investigations the whereabouts of the mother-of-four have never been discovered. Darren Osment, now 41, was accused of killing her. Today, a jury at Bristol Crown Court returned a guilty verdict after he was on trial for her murder.

During the trial Andrew Langdon KC, prosecuting, told jurors: “Once you have heard all the evidence you will be sure that she died at the hands of this defendant, Darren Osment. He knows the manner of her death and he knows how her body was disposed of. In the 11 years since he killed her, he has been carrying the burden of knowing what he did to her. At times he has sought to relieve himself of the burden.”

The court heard the defendant and Ms Holland, 32, met in 2008 when they worked together in a cafe and began a relationship, with a child being born in 2010. The prosecutor told the court Ms Holland was also a heavy drinker and had drunk throughout the pregnancy, and this was a source of tension between the couple. When their child was a few weeks old, police were called to the home they shared in Bradley Stoke, South Gloucestershire, following allegations of alcohol-fuelled domestic violence.

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CCTV shows Claire Holland's last movements (Avon & Somerset Police / SWNS)

Shortly afterwards, the child was placed in foster care. One social worker told police after the child was taken into care: “Darren was blaming Claire for the removal of the child due to the fact that she had called the police a few days before our visit and the police had attended their home address.” Another social worker described the relationship as “drink-driven” and Osment did not want the child to be placed with any of Ms Holland’s family.

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But a few weeks before her disappearance, the child went to live with Ms Holland’s aunt outside the Bristol area. There was little contact between Ms Holland and the defendant until the week of her disappearance, the court heard. They had exchanged phone calls and Ms Holland told people in the pub on the night she vanished she was meeting Osment after he finished work as a chef at a pub in Clifton.

Mr Langdon asked the hearing: “Where did she go after she left the pub? She was drunk, we do not know how much money she had left, but she had no keys and no phone. All we really know is that she had a plan to meet Darren Osment. He was very much on her mind. She had things to tell him and she had persuaded herself, perhaps because she was drunk, that he might be pleased to see her.”

Pub chef guilty of murdering ex despite her body never being found

Darren Osment confessing to an undercover officer (Avon and Somerset Police / SWNS)

The prosecution said Osment, a heavy drinker, has in the years since told several people he had killed her or paid someone else to. He allegedly told one friend: “I … I did kill … I did kill her you know, I did kill my ex. I killed her. I … I killed my ex. I threw it off … into the river off Avonmouth Docks in Bristol. I strangled her.” Asked why, Osment replied: “No c***, no stupid b**** is going to keep me away from my child.”

A former partner of the defendant told police he had suggested to her he had paid someone else rather than “get his own hands dirty”. And he is alleged to have told another friend: “I paid someone £500 to have the mother of my child executed.”

Mr Langdon suggested to jurors that Osment, if he was innocent, must have wondered what had happened to the mother of his child. “Or as a guilty man, a man who had indeed met with Claire Holland and then following some drunken argument killed her that night, and had disposed of her body, well then he would have proceeded into the future nervously, wouldn’t he?” Mr Langdon said.

“Looking over his shoulder, worried that he would be found out. Every time he saw a police car his heart would miss a beat. If, despite his dislike of Claire Holland and all he blamed her for, if he had a conscience, and a memory of what he had done, you would expect that he may be troubled by the memory of it.

Bodycam footage of Darren Osment being arrested (Avon & Somerset Police / SWNS)

"If he killed her and found a way to dispose of her body, then despite that fact that he blamed her for so many things concerning their child, he would nonetheless perhaps and to an extent be haunted by the memory of what he had done. He would carry the guilt around with him wherever he went.”

The trial also heard that when Osment came under suspicion, detectives deployed an undercover officer to befriend him. Between December 2020 and July 2022, the officer, posing as a man called Paddy O’Hara, created a fiction of being involved in the criminal underworld with links to organised crime, and enlisted the help of Osment.

In one secret recording Osment tells the officer: “Yeah because of what she did, f****** c*** mate, f*** her. End of, f*** em, she ain’t going to be seeing the light of day again, don’t worry about that.” Giving evidence from behind a screen, Mr O’Hara told the jury Osment never spoke about Ms Holland in a positive way. “He spoke about her in a very derogatory way. He would be quite abusive, and he referred to her as ‘the sh**-c***’ or a ‘sh**-c***’,” he said. "He referred to her as being toxic and a devil. It was a very derogatory way in referring to her. He never referred to her by name.”

Mr O’Hara said when Osment spoke about Ms Holland he often gagged or had to vomit and said when he tried to sleep at night, he could see her face and “black eyes”. The jury was played extracts of the many hours of undercover recordings in which Osment discusses what evidence detectives might have against him, after he was arrested in March 2022 on suspicion of Ms Holland’s murder. “He never gave me the real impression that he was entirely innocent,” Mr O’Hara said. “He would talk about the lack of proof or evidence that could be got – that last piece of the jigsaw, referring to the body.”

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Osment, of Patchway, South Gloucestershire, denied the charge of murder on a date between June 5 and June 8 2012.

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