Voice note showed victim's fear, murder trial told

A charity worker who was killed by her partner sent a voice note to a friend saying "I can't not make him angry", a jury has heard.

Annabel Rook, 46, was killed by Crossrail worker Clifton George at their home in Stoke Newington, in north London, before he started a fire that triggered a gas canister blast.

George, 45, admits manslaughter and arson on 16 June 2025, but denies murder, blaming the killing on a loss of self-control.

He has claimed the explosion at the property on Dumont Road was one of several suicide attempts he made after punching, strangling and stabbing Rook about 20 times.

In a voice note sent to a friend in May 2025, which was played to the jury, Rook described George becoming angry because she did not clean his knives properly.

The message, played at Snaresbrook Crown Court, said: "He really lost it at me on Saturday… as I was just saying to him… very gently saying, 'please, please stop shouting at me.'"

The voice note added: "He was just getting more and more worked up about these knives because I haven't cleaned them properly, he kept saying things to me [like] you're a liar, you're a liar, Annabel."

She continued: "I can't not make him angry, it's always going to happen.

"I've made him angry because I haven't dried up his knife. For me it just feels too volatile," she told her friend, adding: "I just know in my gut it's not right."

Prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC put to George that "there's a knife on the side, so what?" and "you just pick it up, you wipe it clean with a cloth and you move on".

George told the court that "there wasn't a big argument about it" and denied he had managed to turn an issue about cleaning into an "argument about her being a liar".

The jury heard their relationship was crumbling and George said the couple had argued before he stabbed her.

He claimed that on the day she died, Rook had pushed his head back and he "just lost control".

George told the court: "I attacked Annabel, I attacked her – I threw, I believe, I threw three or four punches at her.

"I know that she fell back because then I was on top of her and I had my hands around her neck, I was strangling her.

"I don't know what was going through my head."

George said he believed at the time that he had stabbed her four or five times.

He described how Rook "fell to her knees with her hands in the air".

George told jurors "I just couldn't believe it, she was dead; I could see it in her eyes, she was dead."

He said: "I kneeled down in front of Annabel's body and I just started to cry, I couldn't believe it."

He hung his head as he described kneeling by her body and crying, and said: "I just wanted to die."

He took the alleged murder weapon and cut his wrists, washed the blood off and changed his clothes before taking medication and drinking whisky before calling his brother, he told the court.

George said he passed out and then started to cut himself again, before taking a gas canister from the garden pizza oven and using it to cause an explosion in the basement in another attempt to end his life.

Nothing happened at first but, as he turned around, the explosion "blew me across the house, I went flying, straight across the house, and I landed by the kitchen table", he told the court.

The murder trial continues.

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