Jailed, jealous Lithuanian builder who murdered property tycoon and wife
A LITHUANIAN builder was jailed for life yesterday for stabbing a married couple to death as they slept in their home.
Viktoras Bruzas, 39, repeatedly plunged a kitchen knife into Patrick Kettyle, 55, and his wife Gillian, 54, as their teenage son cowered in the room next door.
He thought his ex-wife Kristina was having an affair with Mr Kettyle and turned up drunk at the £750,000 semi-detached house in Surrey to ‘ take the ultimate revenge’. After breaking in shortly after midnight, Bruzas attacked the couple with such ferocity that the blade broke in two places.
At some point he became aware of the son next door and shouted: ‘I have no issue with you boy, or your mother. It’s Patrick who ruined my life. I want revenge on Patrick. I’m not scared of prison.’
Bruzas arrived in the UK from Lithuania in 1999 with his wife and their son, and settled in Walton-on-Thames in Surrey.
Mr Kettyle initially warmed to him and hired him to do building jobs. He also employed Mrs Bruzas as a freelance bookkeeper.
But behind the facade of a respectable family man, Bruzas was a violent, obsessive heavy drinker. And when his wife left him he became paranoid that she was sleeping with other men.
Bruzas sent Mr Kettyle, a retired construction boss who let out several properties, threatening emails accusing him of having an affair with his estranged wife. On one occasion he turned up at his house in the village of Fetcham, screaming: ‘Why are you taking my wife away from me?’ The builder had denied murdering the couple but yesterday changed his plea to guilty at the Old Bailey.
Mr Justice Spencer said he should serve a minimum of 33 years in jail.
‘You drove ten miles to their home, broke into their house and murdered them in cold blood,’ he said. ‘In the course of the evening you drank two bottles of wine – possibly to give you Dutch courage.’
Judge Spencer said Bruzas’s obsession with his wife’s supposed infidelity was ‘groundless’, adding: ‘You got it into your head they were having an affair and you allowed this belief to fester. It’s plain that you have a jealous and controlling nature when it comes to women.
‘A later girlfriend says you even demanded a sick note on one occasion when she failed to turn up on a date with you – in reality it was appendicitis.’
Prosecutor Alan Kent told how the couple’s terrified 16-year- old son woke to hear the attack last November. ‘He sat by his bedroom door holding the handle to stop the killer entering,’ said Mr Kent. The victims’ family said in a statement: ‘Pat and Gilly were a wonderful couple who loved each other dearly.’