HORRIFIED family and friends of murdered Rosemary Corcoran have described the moments they last saw the 25-year-old alive.

A jury at Leicester Crown Court heard the mum-of-three from Castle Vale in Birmingham, was on her first night out in six months when her killer struck.

On Remembrance Sunday, Miss Corcoran's battered body was found in a lane in Rashwood, near Droitwich.

Philip Smith, from Braithwaite Road in Sparkbrook, Birmingham, denies murdering her, 21 year-old Jodie Hyde and Carol Jordan, a 39 year-old care worker.

Diane Russell, Miss Corcoran's aunt and a barmaid at Smith's local, The Rainbow in Digbeth, told the court the odd-job man was in the pub on Saturday, November 11.

He was wearing a grubby black T-shirt with a skull motif on it, she said.

That night, she, her niece and her niece's boyfriend Mark Sultan were in there drinking.

By closing time, Mr Sultan was fed up and went home but his girlfriend refused to leave. She was chatting to old flame Martin McDonagh.

"I thought she was going to have a few pints and come back to mine", Mr Sultan told the court.

Mrs Russell went to bed the worse for wear. "That was the last time I saw Rosie alive", she said.

Drinker Patrick Savage remembered Miss Corcoran asking him where the nearest late-night bar was.

He suggested the Kerryman, and Smith was asked to take her and Mr McDonagh there. "He gave me a lift home and drove like a maniac," Mr McDonagh said in a statement, read out by prosecutor Timothy Raggatt, QC.

"He said there were other people in the pub that wanted lifts."

Steve Brunant, a doorman at the Kerryman, remembered Smith, Miss Corcoran and Mr McDonagh.

Under cross-examination from Rachel Brand QC, defending, Mr Brumant told the court drunk Mr McDonagh had been hauled out of the ladies' toilets and thrown out of the Kerryman. Smith encouraged them.

Later, at around 4.40am, CCTV footage showed Smith manhandling Miss Corcoran outside the Monte Carlo club in Soho Road, Handsworth.

PC Jonathan Richards and his colleague PC Martin Maynard spotted the row and intervened.

Smith assured them and claimed Miss Corcoran had been rowing with a black man. The officers drove off.

On Remembrance Sunday Mrs Russell found out her niece was missing and said Smith re-appeared in the pub, agitated. The 36-year-old had different clothes on.

"He was clean," Mrs Russell said. "He never used to look clean. He'd change his clothes far and between - not often."

"The next day Smith came in again.

"I was telling him that Rosie has gone missing," she said.

She sat and listened to Smith voluntarily making a statement to the police. He told them a different story, she said. The trial continues.

Stamped, kicked and crushed

PRETTY Rosie Corcoran died from horrific head and neck injuries which dislodged her brain and forced her jaw to snap away from her skull.

The 25 year-old mum had been beaten, stamped on and kicked so ferociously that the pathologist called to the murder scene could only just detect she was white, and a woman.

Her face had been stoved in so badly none of her features were visible and her teeth had come out.

Dr Klaus Chen, Home Office pathologist, told Leicester Crown Court yesterday that the mum-of-three's bones "had been broken into pieces".

When police found her battered body in Rashwood, near Droitwich, bones were sticking out of gashes in her nose and cheek. Her jaw had been broken in three places and she was lying in a pool of blood.

"The blows would have to have been of considerable force," Dr Chen told the court.

"Stamps or kicks at least. I can't say how many blows - certainly in double figures." He said Miss Corcoran's voice box has been crushed and described deep gashes on her neck. He could not rule out strangulation, he said.

"This would have happened through a direct blow or crushing.

"On her genitals, there were bruising and lacerations - splits.

"But there was no injury internally, which would indicate that there had been no forcible penetration".

Some of her injuries, he said, were probably caused by an instrument with a relatively sharp edge - possibly a bar of some sort.

Narrow, rectangular bruises were found across her right nipple and further down her body. Her left hand was grazed where her killer dragged her bleeding body along the ground. Her killer had also driven over her arm leaving a muddy tyre mark. Only the softness of the ground, he said, had prevented another break.

"There were injuries to the brain," Dr Chen added.

" There was a haemorrhage. That indicates that the brain inside the skull has been rocking and has made contact with the inside of the skull or has become torn away."

Timothy Raggatt, QC, prosecuting, asked what would have caused this.

"Repeated blows to the head," he replied.

"Possibly punches that are causing the head to move violently, possibly from an instrument."

Philip Smith, of Braithwaite Road, Sparkbrook, denies three murders. The trial continues.