Jurors have been asked to be "calm, cool and dispassionate" as the Sion Jenkins murder retrial enters its closing stages.

Prosecution counsel Nicholas Hilliard told the six-man, six-woman jury not to let emotion cloud their judgement during his summing up speech yesterday.

He also asked them not to look at the welter of scientific evidence in isolation. Mr Hilliard instead called on them to draw on everything produced during the eight-week Old Bailey trial.

He said there was a "very compelling" case against 47-year-old Jenkins even before reaching the scientific evidence.

Mr Hilliard said: "Nobody could be anything other than angered about Billie-Jo Jenkins' death. A 13-year-old girl attacked and killed in her own home.

"These facts alone can arouse strong feelings of anger at whoever did it, especially from Billie-Jo's own father Bill, her own family, her own sister and brother and for Billie-Jo herself, who had her whole future ahead of her.

"These feelings have their place, of course, but not at this stage."

Mr Hilliard said Jenkins' time in prison, following his 1998 conviction for Billie-Jo's murder, should not influence them.

He told the jury: "There is no substitute for a calm, cool and dispassionate examination of the evidence in this case and it is on that basis that you undertook to make your verdict."

Jenkins, former deputy headteacher at William Parker School in Parkstone Road, Hastings, is alleged to have bludgeoned Billie-Jo to death with an 18-inch metal tent peg in a fit of temper on February 15, 1997.

Billie-Jo, who attended Helenswood School on The Ridge, St Leonards, had been struck at least five times as she painted patio doors at the family home in Lower Park Road, Hastings.

During his summing up yesterday, Mr Hilliard said Jenkins was under extreme pressure at the time because of domestic and work-related tension.

Mr Hilliard undermined defence claims that an intruder must have crept in and killed Billie-Jo while Jenkins fetched white spirit.

He said a mentally ill man known as Mr B who had been seen in the area on the day of the murder had been ruled out as a suspect.

Mr Hilliard said that Mr B provided none of the answers to Billie-Jo's death and added: "But the defendant does."

Jenkins denies murder. The case continues.