A bone expert told jurors the charred remains of a murder victim did not weigh enough to confirm police had found her whole skeleton.

The fragments of bone and teeth identified as missing mother-of-two Alexandra Morgan weighed less than half an average cremated woman.

Hove Crown Court heard 2,600 fragments were recovered from a makeshift brazier in a skip.

The bones had either been burnt at a very high temperature, at a lower temperature for a longer time, or a combination of the two.

Detectives searching for Ms Morgan recovered the bones and teeth from a building site where double murder suspect Mark Brown had been working in Sevenoaks, Kent.

Mark Brown, 41, of Squirrel Close in St Leonards, denies murdering two women at Little Bridge Farm, where he rented land and a barn.

Leah Ware, who had been living in a shipping container at the farm, has not been seen since May last year.

The charred remains of Alex Morgan were found in the skip at a building site where Brown was working in Sevenoaks in Kent after she disappeared in November 2021.

Forensic anthropologist Dr Julie Roberts told the court it was very clear the bones had been involved in a fire.

The bones were broken up by force, the expert said.

Analysis of the bones was able to place 338 of the fragments on a body map shown to the jury.

Dr Roberts said the investigation team had recovered human bone fragments weighing 674g.

The average female skeleton weighs 2,130g at the lower end, the court heard.

Duncan Atkinson KC for the Crown asked the expert: “Does it follow it was not a whole body’s worth?”

“No, not in terms of weight,” the expert said.

The bones had been broken up by mechanical force either deliberate or incidental, Dr Roberts said.

“It was not possible to say if it was during or after the fire,” she said.

The jury was shown a picture of the fragments laid out in a rough skeleton.

The bones recovered were much less than the average female cremated body, the expert agreed, with fewer bones from the middle of the body.

She said: “The bones from those areas are more easy to crush. There are fragments from every area of the skeleton represented.”

Brown has admitted he was present when Alex Morgan died and disposed of her body by fire.

The investigation found no evidence of bone fragments from more than one body at the Sevenoaks site, Dr Roberts said.

Alex Morgan, 34, was reported missing in November 2021 after failing to return from a weekend away.

She was last seen filling her car at a petrol station near her home in Cranbrook in Kent on the morning of November 14.

Leah Ware, 33, a mother-of-three from Hastings, was last seen by a friend in the early hours of May 6, 2021.

The trial continues.