KILL MY HUSBAND AND I’LL HAVE SEX WITH YOU
Life sentence for wife who wanted her hubby’s £1m inheritance
A CHEATING wife who lured two men home with the promise of sex if they killed her millionaire husband has been caged for life.
Charlotte Collinge, 45, told Stephen Shreeves, 40, and Kelvin Dale, 27, she would sleep with them if they came back to the £400,000 home she shared with husband Clifford in October last year.
As they arrived at her property in Mansfield, Notts, she said she “hated” her 62-year-old husband and asked if they knew anyone who could kill him for his £1million fortune.
The men launched a savage attack on retired newsagent Clifford, using weapons including a vice, that left him with 46 separate injuries.
Flirting
Meanwhile, heartless Collinge went out to buy cocaine and when she got back to the house she stepped over her husband, whose battered body lay in a pool of blood, instead of calling for help.
Prosecutors said that if there had not been a delay in dialling 999, Mr Collinge may have survived.
A day before the killing, Collinge, who had a string of lovers, told a friend: “I can’t take any more of him.
“I’ve had enough of Cliff. The only way to get him out of my life is to kill him.”
The following night she started flirting with strangers Shreeves and Dale in a wine bar and persuaded them to return home with her.
When police arrived at the scene after the attack, Collinge was heard to say: “Oh God, I think I have killed him.”
Then she claimed she had no idea Mr Collinge was going to be attacked and had returned to find him lying injured.
She told jurors she failed to call an ambulance because she was “in shock”.
Following a four-week trial at Nottingham Crown Court, a jury of five women and seven men found Collinge, Shreeves and Dale guilty of his murder.
Collinge was jailed for a minimum of 23 years, while Shreeves and Dale were each jailed for 18 years.
Sentencing the trio, His Honour Mr Justice Colman Treacy, said: “The killing of Clifford Collinge in his own home was a truly shocking offence.
“On the evidence I have heard, I’m satisfied he was a man who offered no harm to any of you and who indeed had, over a number of years, tolerated the wilful and manipulative behaviour of an unfaithful wife.”
Weeks earlier, Collinge had moved out to live with a 21-year-old “toy boy”, but despite this her husband carried on sending her money and let her go home when she claimed her lover had beaten her up.
A week before his death, Collinge had talked of killing her husband with sleeping pills and making his death look like an accident.
Peter Joyce QC, prosecuting, told the jury: “Collinge would speak openly about gaining access to his home and money, stating, ‘I’ll have that house. I will use any means whatsoever to get it’.”
Payment
The court heard that in the event of Mr Collinge’s death, his estate would be split between his wife and two children – Julie Bowles, 34, by his first marriage, and Cristal, 16, who was his daughter with Collinge.
Collinge would have got the £400,000 marital home, a cash payment of £250,000, all of his belongings and half of future rents from other properties he owned. The total would have been around £1million.