JURORS trying a landlord accused of murdering two students, one of whom was found stuffed in a suitcase near York, have been warned not to act as detectives.

"It is not for you to solve the crime. It is very tempting to try and solve it - but beware. Your job is to see whether the prosecution have solved it," said William Clegg QC, defending.

He argued the prosecution's case against Kyu Soo Kim was fatally flawed. "I venture that not one of you can say to yourselves - I know what happened.

"If you cannot answer that question now, at the end of the evidence, then the prosecution has not begun to prove how either girl met her death.

"We all know from the pathologists that each girl died as a result of her airway being obstructed by the application of tape to her face. But does any one of you know how that tape came to be applied to either of those unfortunate girls?

"What you know is that anyone who has their airway obstructed is going to fight literally like a drowning man in order to let the air get into the lungs. Yet in each case, the victims did not have one bruise between them.

"Do not shy away from the blunt truth of the case. Here we are at the close of the evidence and not one of you knows how the girls were incapacitated without causing any injury."

Mr Clegg said the Old Bailey jury should ask who was present when they died. The prosecution suggested Kim was there alone. "The central question is how could he alone have done it. Have the prosecution proved there was one person present at each death?"

Unless jurors could answer that question, they could not "begin to arrive at an adverse verdict against the defendant".

Prosecution allege that Kim first used artistic tape to suffocate 21-year-old Hyo Jung Jin, a French literature graduate while she was staying at his London premises while on a sightseeing tour. She was found in the foetal position in a suitcase which Kim allegedly left in a country lane near Askham Richard. When officers shone a torch, they saw hair, a human eye and blood slowly leaking out, the court has heard.

Kim, 31, from Holborn, central London, denies murdering Miss Jin between October 25 and 28, and another student, In Hea Song, 22, between December 3 and 8, 2001.

They were both South Korean women on visits to Britain when "they were murdered in the most chilling and distressing circumstances", Jonathan Laidlaw, prosecuting, has told the court.

Updated: 10:19 Friday, March 21, 2003