THE former wife of a man accused of a brutal child sex murder told a court of their troubled life.

Beverley Castree, 52, ex-wife of Ronald Castree, told Bradford Crown Court of a series of his affairs and how her husband admitted sexually assaulting a young girl in 1976.

Castree, 53, denies murdering 11-year-old Lesley Molseed (pictured right) in October, 1975. She was abducted from her home in Rochdale and then sexually assaulted and stabbed repeatedly and left on the moors at Ripponden.

Mrs Castree t said they were married in 1973, when she was 18, and she gave birth to her first child, Jason, on September 19, 1975 – although Castree was not the father.

She had to go back into hospital with a deep vein thrombosis on October 3 and was discharged on Thursday, October 9. Lesley went missing on the Sunday in between.

Mrs Castree said that at the time her ex-husband was living at the family home on Oldham Road, Rochdale, on his own.

The couple were divorced in 1997.

Mrs Castree said her ex-husband was repeatedly unfaithful and had a string of girlfriends throughout their marriage, telling police he had girlfriends “all over the place”.

“There was always a third party in our marriage. That was the problem,” she told the jury.

The trial continues.