Killer laid false trail after suffocating lover
A KILLER suffocated his lover and laid a false trail for detectives in an act of “breathtaking cruelty”, a court heard.
Michael Stirling, 32, flew into such an intense rage during a row with Samantha Eastwood, 28, at her Stoke-ontrent home that he suffocated her.
The pair had been having an affair for three years. She had been engaged to his wife’s brother, but had called off their wedding months earlier.
After murdering her, Stirling carefully laid Miss Eastwood’s unworn wedding dress and engagement ring out on her bed. The following day he sent a series of texts to her sister from her phone, claiming she was having a breakdown and needed some “me time,” Stafford Crown Court heard.
One said: “Please leave me alone” while another suggested she had met a “guy off the internet” and was being driven towards the motorway.
Police later likened his level of deceit to that of Ian Huntley, the Soham killer.
Stirling bound Miss Eastwood’s face and eyes with masking tape before wrapping her body inside a single duvet cover. He bundled her into a van and drove to his parents’ house for dinner, where he was “fine and cheerful”, before going home for a shower. He later went out in his van on the pretext of searching for Miss Eastwood, but disposed of her body “like an animal” in the undergrowth on the edge of the Staffordshire Moorland.
He then returned to her family home where distraught relatives had gathered and he hugged her younger sister. Gemma Eastwood told the court: “Forever this will haunt me.”
Stirling was caught when he was tailed by police as he returned to check on the body six days later.
The married landscape gardener, who has a four-year-old daughter, was yesterday sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 16 years and 10 months.
Mrs Justice Carr told him: “Samantha was alone in her home, where she should have been safe and sound, and trusted you in her house.
“She suffered what must have been a terrifying assault resulting in a killing that was not immediate.
“In the agonising hours and days following her death you lied and lied, over and over again, in an attempt to cover up what you had done.” Miss Eastwood was reported missing by concerned colleagues after she failed to show up for a night shift at Royal Stoke University Hospital, where she was a midwife. On the day of her death, neighbours heard a woman screaming and shouting: “Get off me!” Stirling was arrested two days later but released under investigation.
Four days after that, on Aug 2, he inadvertently led police to her body. He was re-arrested and in October pleaded guilty to murder. DI Dan Ison, who led the investigation, said: “To go to that level of deceit is unthinkable. I liken his actions to that of Ian Huntley.”