Jilted husband gets life for butchering wife and lover

A ‘MERCILESS’ husband who butchered his estranged wife and her lover to death after discovering they were an item was yesterday jailed for life with a minimum term of 31 years.

Former headteacher Rhys Hancock murdered wife Helen, the mother of his three children, and Martin Griffiths at the former marital home in Duffield, Derbyshire, on New Year’s Day.

The 40-year-old then called police to inform officers: ‘I’ve just murdered my wife in her bed.’

Hancock inflicted 66 injuries on his 39-year-old wife using two kitchen knives he had taken from his mother’s house in Etwall, ten miles away.

Mr Griffiths, 48, suffered 37 injuries in the attack, with a senior ambulance ‘Savage’: Hancock (right) murdered wife Helen and Martin Griffiths

staff member describing it as ‘the most violent incident he had ever seen in over 17 years’ experience’.

Derby crown court heard that before setting off from his mother Denise’s

house, Hancock had told her of his plans. He predicted he ‘would get 25 or 30 years in prison and that he would be released when he was in his 60s’.

The teacher took his mother’s two landline phones with him but was unable to find her mobile, which she used to call 999, telling the operator: ‘Please you need to go. She has been with another man. My son found out on Friday night. He now has two knives and is on his way there.’

Hancock pleaded guilty to two counts of murder, but judge Nirmal Shant QC said she could not be sure if the injuries he inflicted on his wife were as a result of ‘sadistic or sexual conduct’.

Jailing him yesterday, the judge told him: ‘Your actions that night left your three children without a mother and you left Martin’s family without a son and his children without a father.’

Prosecutor Michael Auty QC had described the premeditated murders as ‘savage’, ‘merciless’ and ‘committed in the coldest of blood’.