Craig Smith, 20, said he saw 13-year-old Claire Hart on the day of her murder but said she walked off after five minutes and continued on her way to school.

Claire vanished while walking the mile from her home in Eaton, Cheshire, to Dane Valley High School along a footpath on the A536 road between Macclesfield and Congleton. Her body was later found in the River Dane.

Mr Smith, unemployed, from Buglawton, near Congleton, denies murdering Claire Hart on 18 June last year.

He told a jury at Chester Crown Court he had never threatened to strangle anyone.

'This is for strangling people'

The court had earlier heard from 10-year-old Thomas Higginson that Mr Smith had produced a length of cord from his pocket shortly before Claire's death and told the boy: "This is for strangling people I don't like."

Thomas told the jury Mr Smith had added: "I'm not joking."

He said he and two of his friends had met Mr Smith on the banks of the River Dane close to where her body was later found.

The prosecution says Mr Smith beat and strangled Claire, probably with her own school tie.

She also had a head wound consistent with an airgun pellet injury.

Mr Smith told the jury that while he had a number of guns none of them had worked since one was stolen at the end of 1997.

Eyewitnesses said he was carrying a gun when he was talking to Claire.

'Gun was a fishing rod'

He said what they may have thought was a gun was actually his fishing rod.

Jack Price QC, defending, asked Smith: "Did you kill anybody that day?"

"No," came the reply.

Mr Price asked: "Had you harmed Claire in any way?"

"No, I had no reason to. I had only met her twice," he said.

Asked to explain why he denied having seen Claire, Mr Smith said, "because they said she had gone missing I really didn't want anything to do with it".

Smith told the jury his mother had lied when she gave evidence that he had begged her to wash his clothes after the girl's death.

He said: "I wouldn't have begged her if I did have something to hide, I would have done it myself."