A LANDLADY has told a jury of the day she came to suspect her York city centre flat was being used as a brothel.

Christine Crowther said she was confused and shocked by what she saw when she visited the £995-per-month apartment at Emperor’s Wharf, Skeldergate, in February 2013.

The visit culminated with her husband finding an Asian woman crouching in a walk-in wardrobe, wearing a bathrobe.

She was giving evidence at York Crown Court, where husband and wife Brian and Khemthong Reynolds stand accused of running brothels at the flat and also at a terraced property in Kyme Street, Bishophill.

Mrs Crowther, from West Yorkshire, said she had been renting out the flat for 19 years, with suitable tenants found for her by letting agents Linley & Simpson. Other tenants had included directors from a York train company.

She said she went to visit the flat with a plumber, following complaints from Mrs Reynolds that there wasn’t sufficient hot water.

She found notices posted outlining house rules, such as a smoking ban, and a single bed had been moved from a bedroom into the sitting room and replaced by a double bed. The sitting room was furnished like a waiting room, with a lot of drinks on a table, and she answered the intercom from outside, and heard a “gruff ” man ask if he could come up for a few minutes.

She found a bedroom was lit by a lamp with a red sheet hanging at a window which kept out the daylight.

“I thought what on earth was going on here?” she said.

When her husband later came to the flat, he found a very small Asian woman crouching inside a huge walk-in wardrobe. She thought at first the female was a child, but she said she was aged 36 or 38.

Mrs Crowther said she went straight to the letting agents, where it was concluded the flat was being used as a brothel.

“They were very surprised,” she said. Then she went to the police station to make a statement.

Khemthong Reynolds, 39, and Brian Reynolds, 53, both of Gainsborough Road, Richmond, Surrey, deny running a brothel in Kyme Street, as do Nichanana Parton, 37, of Swindon and Richmond, and Sarinya Bunsanong, 42, of Welland Road, Hilton, Derby, Khemthong and Brian Reynolds also deny running a brothel in Emperor’s Wharf, and together with Parton, 37, deny two charges relating to £8,505 the prosecution claim were takings from the brothels.

The trial continues.