Christopher Edwards can still remember carrying the bodies of his wife's parents to their makeshift grave in their garden.
Despite their deaths being 15 years ago, he told his trial on June 12 how he had started early one Saturday digging a hole for William and Patricia Wycherley.
His first attempted was thwarted when he hit a cable but his second was more successful.
Mr Edwards, 57, carried Mrs Wycherley down the stairs first because she was bigger and heavier.
"Mr Wycherley was much, much lighter," he told his trial.
"He was a scrawny-built person."
Mr Edwards' impression had been that Mr Wycherley was stiff.
But he was not an expert on rigor mortis, the court heard, and at the time he had not seen any part of Mr Wycherley's duvet-wrapped body.
His wife, who hid the bodies at the Wycherley's Forest Town home for a week, had claimed she could smell the bodies on her return with her husband.
However, Mr Edwards told the jury: "The only smell I was aware of was a very strong smell of stale tobacco."
Pathologist Stuart Hamilton had told the court this week that if someone was dead for seven days the smell would have been "pungent, foul and evading".
Mr Edwards said he found out about the Wycherleys that day.
His wife revealed what had happened as they sat down to eat fish and chips.
She claimed she had found her 60-year-old mother with a revolver and her 85-year-old father on the floor at the house when she visited the week before.
Mr Edwards told the jury his wife "flipped" when her mother said she preferred him to her daughter and they had slept together.
Mrs Edwards has admitted the manslaughter of her mother by provocation but denies murder.
Dafydd Enoch QC, defending, asked Mr Edwards at what point did he go and check the bodies were where his wife said they were.
"She took me to the bedroom," he told the jury.
"The door was closed. The bed was down. I saw these shrouded shapes. I turned out the light and closed the door."
Mrs Edwards wanted to go to police but his wife was "very distressed" and asked him not too.
"She suggested we could hide them," he said.
"The first decision that was suggested was perhaps we could hide them in the loft."
Eventually, he said the most "feasible" place was to bury them in the garden as they did not have a car.
"Did you dig the hole?" asked Mr Enoch. Mr Edwards, 55, told him: "Yes, I did in the course of the Saturday, starting early."
The grave was covered with plants and they spent the next 15 years tricking family members, neighbours, doctors and financial institutions into believing the Wycherleys were still alive.
Meanwhile they 'cleaned out' the Wycherleys' bank accounts and continued to steal their pension and benefit payments, claim prosecutors.
The bloodstained carpet was cut up and pieces taken home and dumped in bins, the court has heard.
When theEdwards realised the net was closing in, the pair, who were in France, relayed a 'carefully hatched and rehearsed story' on their return to the UK, it has been claimed.
The jury were told yesterday the Edwards, of no fixed address, have admitted a charge of obstructing a coroner in the execution of his duty and theft of money from a Halifax bank account.
The trial continues
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