Inspector handed 19 years for murdering his wife

A POLICE inspector has been jailed for at least 19 years for murdering his detective constable wife.

Darren McKie, 43, was sentenced at Chester Crown Court for killing his wife, Leanne, 39. The Greater Manchester Police officer had admitted the manslaughter of his wife, who was found in Poynton Lake, Cheshire, on September 29 last year, but was found guilty last Friday of her murder.

Sentencing him to life imprisonment, judge Mr Justice Spencer said: “You strangled her to death in the family home. It was a cruel killing.”

McKie, wearing a navy blue suit, looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as he was sentenced.

Families of both the defendant and Mrs McKie were in court for the hearing. Mr Justice Spencer said the “spectre of serious and constant debt” was in the background and the couple were living beyond their means.

He said: “Your combined monthly income was greatly exceeded by your monthly expenditure. Despite this you took an expensive family holiday in Portugal that summer, costing over £6,000.

“There was bound to be a day of reckoning.”

He said McKie resorted to “subterfuge and fraud” to hide the debts, said to be more than £115,000, from his wife.

The court heard he forged his wife’s signature and misused the police computer to obtain copies of her payslips for a loan application.

When the documents were returned to the family home in Wilmslow and discovered by Mrs McKie on the morning of her death, she sent a text message to her husband calling him a liar.

Mr Justice Spencer said: “At 11.32am you texted her that you were coming home. Within the hour you had killed her.”

Trevor Burke QC, defending, said: “Nothing I say in mitigation for Mr McKie can minimise the suffering of his family and his children.”

Mrs McKie’s mother Ellen Dodd said: “We are so sad that Leanne’s children have been left without a mother to look after them and watch them grow up.”