A man accused of murdering songwriter Matthew Clarke admitted being at his house that day, along with co-accused Shannon Tucker.

However, continuing to deny responsibility for the killing, Vernon Simons claimed Mr. Clarke owed money to a Jamaican man over an alleged drug importation plot.

Simons suggested to detectives that this was linked to Mr. Clarke being found stabbed and bludgeoned to death in his bed on April 9 2008.

In a taped Police interview played to a Supreme Court jury yesterday, he told Police he'd been summoned by the anonymous Jamaican to a meeting in a car three months prior to the killing. Mr. Clarke was also present. Simons, 24, claimed the Jamaican told him in front of Mr. Clarke that "he wants his money before Matthew gets found dead."

Simons is jointly charged with murder along with Tucker, 32, of Southampton and Kyle Sousa, 18, of Warwick. All three deny the charge. Mr. Clarke, who worked for construction company owner Tucker before his death, suffered more than 20 stab wounds to his neck and chest and had been repeatedly hit in the head with a metal bar.

According to prosecutors, at least two of the accused inflicted the fatal injuries and after the killing, Simons and Sousa dropped a bag with the metal bar into a pond, showered and disposed of their clothes.

In the tape played to the court yesterday, Simons said the Jamaican contacted him on his phone in late January 2008. He did not know how he got his number. He claimed when he later got into the Jamaican's car and found Matthew Clarke inside too the Jamaican proceeded to threaten Mr. Clarke over a debt.

"He told me, told Matthew in front of me, that 'you owe me a lot of blood clot money and I want my f*****g money," he told the Police.

Simons explained that Police had earlier found marijuana in a shipment of machine parts for some of Tucker's construction equipment. Both he and Tucker had been arrested and bailed over the find. Simons told the detectives that during the meeting in the car, the Jamaican man indicated knowledge that he and Tucker were not responsible for the drugs.

Simons told the officers he believed Mr. Clarke was actually involved in the conspiracy to import the drugs and that he and Tucker had somehow been framed. However, he strenuously denied allegations from Detective Constable Rohan Henry that he and his co-accused attacked Mr. Clarke in anger over their own arrests.

In the taped interview, Det. Con Henry put it to Simons: "The fact that you guys were having to answer bail on that same day, it aggravated you guys and you guys went to the home of Matthew Clarke in the company of Kyle and you inflicted these blows with this iron bar that you got from the back of Shannon's vehicle, and you also stabbed Matthew Clarke."

Simons replied: "That's false."

He insisted that he was not frustrated with Mr. Clarke, despite believing that he was responsible for his wrongful arrest. "I have nothing against Matthew Clarke like I said. I never had anything against him regardless of the fact that I was paying for something that I didn't have nothing to do with," he told the detectives.

The jury has already heard a number of taped Police interviews conducted after Simons was arrested on April 13 2008. In the earlier interviews, Simons denied being at Mr. Clarke's house on the day he was killed.

In yesterday's tape, however, he admitted that he'd lied. He told the Police he had visited the victim's residence along with Tucker for ten to 15 minutes while Tucker used Mr. Clarke's computer. Simons claimed he fled when he saw a hooded and masked man climbing over a wall into the property, then heard a commotion inside Mr. Clarke's bedroom.

"I said look let's go home 'cause I don't know what the f**k's going on," he explained, going on to tell how he later found a bag in his own yard in North Street, Pembroke, with a metal pipe and a red shirt in it.

Simons assumed that this had been dropped there by whoever he had seen coming over the wall at Mr. Clarke's house. He told the Police he disposed of this bag and the contents in a pond near Dellwood School because he feared he was being set up and worried he could be wrongly implicated in a crime.

Asked why he had lied to the Police previously, Simons told detectives he'd been in fear of his life due to what he'd seen that day and the earlier encounter with the Jamaican man he believed may be linked to the murder.

"I'm trying to help you find his killer. You know what I mean. Some things I didn't want to say at first because I felt threatened," he explained.