A MAN accused of murdering a fellow drug user threatened to kill him after suspecting he had stolen his cannabis crop, a court heard.

Several weeks before Darren McMinn went missing, Candido Pereira is said to have told the 48-year-old grandfather, ‘I’ll f...ing kill you’.

Giving evidence at Manchester Crown Court, friend Gary Booth said before Mr McMinn was killed in April he had known him for two years and also moved in the same circles as 37-year-old Pereira.

Mr Booth told the court that Pereira had been growing cannabis at his Chorley New Road, Bolton, basement flat and that a few weeks before Mr McMinn, who was known as Macky, was killed, a crop had gone missing.

“He always blamed Macky,” said Mr Booth.

He added that the three of them were at Mr McMinn’s home in Connaught Square, Tonge Moor, when Pereira began trying to find out who had stolen the crop.

Mr Booth said that Pereira warned Mr McMinn he would kill him if he got proof he had taken it.

“But it was not meant with the malice that it sounds,” said Mr Booth, adding that the conversation had been ‘just banter’.

The jury had previously heard how Pereira killed Mr McMinn on April 11 after the victim had gone to his Chorley New Road flat to take heroin and then wrapped the body in a carpet, disposing of it at Yarrow Reservoir near Rivington.

Divers recovered the body two weeks later on May 3. Pereira denies murdering Mr McMinn, claiming he killed the victim in self-defence.

In a statement Mr McMinn’s son, Saul, told how his father was a fitness enthusiast who was always there for him but his former partner, Juliette Taffee told the jury that he had had a serious drug habit for many years, succeeding in getting clean on several occasions before returning to heroin.

She added that when on drugs his personality changed and he became short tempered, but he was “never, ever” violent.

Mr McMinn was living at the Halliwell home of Miss Taffee’s aunt, Denise Hallam at the time he went missing.

Mrs Hallam said she last saw him mid morning on April 11.

“He wasn’t well,” she told the court.

“I could tell by the way he looked. He was very pale,”

She added that his illness was drug addiction and Mr McMinn told her he had made a phone call to “Candy” to arrange to get drugs.

“He said Candy was the one who would sort him out because he was poorly and had no money,” she said.

At 12.30pm he left her home on his bicycle, telling her “I’ll be back in 10 minutes.”

But when he did not return that afternoon she began to worry and later contacted police to report him missing.

During the afternoon Mr McMinn’s friend Daniel Farrell turned up at her home trying to find him.

Mr Farrell told the jury that he had known Macky for two years and was aware that his friend took heroin and crack cocaine and, at times, sold heroin.

He said his pal had sent him a text at 10.30am that morning, which he had not immediately answered because he was asleep after staying up during the night with his father, who was terminally ill..

Just after 1pm Mr Farrell said he sent Mr McMinn as series of texts asking “Where are you?” but got no reply.

“I knew that there was something out of the ordinary because he would never not answer my calls,” said Mr Farrell.

“Alarm bells started ringing.”

But then, just before 7pm he received a text purporting to come from Mr McMinn’s phone stating: “I’m busy — call you later.”

The messages from the phone continued claiming Mr McMinn was “at Farm Foods waiting for gear.”

But Mr Farrell said he became suspicious when he received a text stating: “Lol. you thought I got done by the pigs?”

“He wouldn’t address the police as that. They (the texts) were not how he would have written them,” said Mr Farrell.

David Fish QC, defending, said it is accepted that Mr McMinn did not send the messages, with the prosecution claiming that, at the time, the phone’s owner was already dead.

The trial continues.