A MAN has been cleared of causing his cousin's death in an apparent sex game which went wrong.
Mark Pickford, 41, was charged with manslaughter over the death of Dawn Warburton, 40, who was found suspended naked above her bed with more than 30 injuries. He was also accused of assaulting her before her death.
He was today found not guilty of both charges after a jury spent 7 hours and 42 minutes deliberating.
Miss Warburton was found with a tow rope from Mr Pickford's car wrapped around her neck several times. It had been passed under her mattress and hung through a Velux window.
Police found Mr Pickford sleeping beneath her dead body when they arrived at her flat in Westbourne Avenue, west Hull, on April 13 last year.
In one message Pickford sent five days before her death, he wrote: "Gonna tie you up for a couple of days next time I come up, bite you, burn you."
He also told her: "I'll kick your head in, use you and abuse you."
Giving evidence at his trial at Hull Crown Court, Mr Pickford said he "blacked out" after drinking and taking drugs on the day of her death and could not remember anything between 5pm and when he was woken by police at about 9pm.
He told the jury they had never engaged in violent sex, despite exchanging more than 400 explicit text messages in the weeks before her death.
