A JURY was told that the murder of two drug dealers was “cynically” planned by “allies” who sought to blame each other when the crime was discovered.

In the prosecution’s closing speech, Ross Stone and Thomas Haigh were said to have killed David Griffith and Brett Flournoy, as a joint enterprise.

The bodies of the two men were found buried in their van, which had been set alight, at Sunny Corner, a small holding near St Austell, Cornwall, where Stone lived.

During the trial, prosecutor Paul Dunkels QC, said Griffith, 35, from Plymouth, and Flournoy, 31, from Merseyside, had been killed over drug debts.

Stone, 28, and Haigh, a 26-year-old cage fighter from Denby Dale, each blamed the other for the killing on June 16 last year, but Mr Dunkels said they had worked together.

“Brett Flournoy and David Griffiths were each shot dead at Sunny Corner,” he said.

“They were murdered, the prosecution say, as a result of a joint enterprise of the two defendants and each of them had a different role to play in that joint enterprise.”