THE husband of Vikki Thompson yesterday told jurors how he asked his wife who her assailant was after he found her with serious head injuries in the West Oxfordshire countryside.

Jonathan Thompson spoke at the trial of Mark Weston, who is accused of the 30-year-old’s August 1995 murder for the second time.

Mr Thompson said he found the mother-of-two at a railway embankment off Shipton Lane, Ascott-under-Wychwood, on August 12 1995. She had been walking her dog and died six days later.

Prose-cutors said new DNA evidence showed 35-year-old Weston killed her, and alleged he struck after Mrs Thomp-son saw him performing an indecent act.

Mr Thompson told Reading Crown Court he grew anxious after she left their Chestnut Drive home at 4pm.

Mrs Thompson was found between 7.15pm and 7.30pm.

He said: “I tried to talk to her to keep her coherent.

“I asked her a number of questions.

“One of then was the name of our son. She coherently replied ‘Matthew’.

“I asked her other questions like ‘who did this you?’ I just got a mumbling.

“I couldn’t work out what she was saying.”

He added: “It’s such a beautiful village, it’s so rare, nothing like that had ever happened before.

“You just don’t expect it, I just thought she was round the corner and would be back any minute.”

The couple had celebrated their ninth wedding anniversary in the previous 24 hours.

John Price, prosecuting, said new DNA evidence had been found from black boots seized from Weston in 1995. He said: “Found upon each of the boots, but which had been missed when they were first examined in 1995 and 1996, were very small blood stains, the DNA profile of which was found to match that of Vikki Thompson to a degree which proves beyond question, the prosecution submit, that it is her blood.”

And he yesterday said blood on the right boot had a less than one-in-a-billion chance of being from someone other than Mrs Thompson.

He told jurors at Reading Crown Court: “If Mark Weston is not the person who killed Vikki Thompson, how did her blood, as it is submitted it plainly is, get on to not just one but both of his boots, especially when it has to have been wet when it did so?”

Other cellular material on the boot stood a one-in-55m chance of being from someone unrelated to Mrs Thompson, he said.

He said: “She was attacked by someone who struck her repeatedly about the head with a heavy object or objects, causing skull fractures and severe brain injury.”

He went on: “It happens, probably, because as she walked with her dog towards the very end of the lane furthest from the village, she caught him watching her and (performing a sex act).

“(She reacted) to this in a way which prompted him to chase and fatally to attack her as she tried to flee back up the lane screaming.”

Weston was arrested in September 1995 and charged the following February.

He was acquitted at Oxford Crown Court in December 1996.

The case was re-opened in 2005, and Weston arrested and charged in October 2009.

Mr Price said changes in law allowed second trials where there was “fresh evidence”.

Sally O’Neill, defending, told jurors witnesses’ memories would have faded since 1995 and DNA evidence was “comprehensively examined at the time”.

She added: “Mark Weston’s case back in 1996 as it is now is that he didn’t assault Vikki Thompson in Shipton Lane or anywhere else that day and he doesn't know who did.”

Weston, 35, of Dawls Close, denies murder. The trial continues.