Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
CAGED FIGHTER
35yrs for brute who kicked lover to death over affair with teen
KILLED Caroline Kayll
A CAGE fighter convicted of murdering his ex girlfriend and trying to kill her 15-year-old lover was jailed for life yesterday.
Paul Robson, 50, used his steel-capped boots as a lethal weapon when he stamped on Caroline Kayll, 47, to inflict catastrophic brain injuries.
The ex-convict also tried to murder her teenage lover with a meat cleaver.
He blackmailed Ms Kayll out of £29,000 in the days before the murder, threatening to expose her illegal relationship with the boy, who cannot be identified.
Robson, who had 21 previous convictions, had tried to cover his tracks by disposing of evidence – including the boots – and blamed the 15-yearold for the murder at Caroline’s home.
Mr Justice Lavender passed a life sentence with the minimum of 35 years. He said: “You grabbed her, she fell or was pushed to the floor and you kicked her repeatedly in the head with your steel toe-capped boots, fracturing the bones in her face and causing cardiac arrest and fatal brain injuries.
“You used those boots as fatal weapons. Not content with that, you slashed her buttocks with a knife and you sprayed an ammonia solution on her.
“You ended her life and you brought grief and misery to the lives of others.”
Judge Lavender said the boy had post traumatic stress disorder and injuries from which he would never recover.
Robson was sentenced to 35 years in prison for the boy’s attempted murder, and five years for blackmail, to run concurrently with the life sentence.
He first met Ms Kayll behind bars when she was a prison officer at HMP Northumberland in 2005, Newcastle crown court heard. The “cruel and calculating coward” became involved in a “clandestine” relationship with her.
It was rekindled when he was again imprisoned for violence and drug offences in 2017, and she left her husband. They later lived together, but split up weeks before the murder on November 15.
On the day that she died, Robson drove from Glasgow to the home they used to share in Linton, Northumberland.
He was wanted on a prison recall at the time after failing to meet his probation officer.
Neighbours in Wallsend, North Tyneside, claimed his upstairs flat “smelt like a cannabis factory”. One said: “There would be noises of sawing and drilling. When the back door was open, you could really smell the cannabis. Then a camera appeared outside the front, which was trained down on to his front door.”
Northumbria Police is investigating if opportunities to arrest him were missed.