A CRIME OF PURE EVIL
Jailed for at least 30 years, ‘she-devil’ and her accomplice who thought they had committed the perfect murder
A ‘BUNNY boiler’ who killed her love rival on her own doorstep was jailed for 30 years yesterday.
Sarah Williams, 35, paralysed Sadie Hartley with a 500,000-volt stun gun before frantically stabbing her dozens of times.
Her trial heard that she slaughtered the businesswoman ‘like an animal’ in an act of ‘pure evil’.
Williams, who described herself as a ‘she-devil’, wanted to win back her former lover, Mrs Hartley’s partner Ian Johnston. She recruited her best friend Katrina Walsh to take part in the murder plot and they used tracker devices, false number plates and disposable phones in an elaborate ‘game of death’.
It culminated 18 months later in 60year-old Mrs Hartley’s murder at her £800,000, five-bedroom home.
Prosecutors said the killers fancied themselves as Batman and Robin and believed they had planned the perfect murder. Yet they had left a trail of evidence – including Walsh’s diaries chronicling their plans. At the conclusion of a seven-week trial at Preston Crown Court yesterday, Mrs Hartley’s two children told of their devastation.
They said their mother had been taken in the ‘cruellest possible way’ by the two ‘utterly dangerous creatures’. It can now be revealed that:
Williams’s fantasy life started at 13 when she sparked a nationwide hunt by
‘Died for your amusement’
claiming she had been abducted;
She was a serial adulterer with a procession of four older lovers with a combined age of 232;
Mr Johnston has been shunned by Mrs Hartley’s family;
Her daughter Charlotte, 23, found out about the murder when she was on holiday just three days after telling her mother she had got engaged;
Williams was so convinced she had got away with the ‘perfect murder’ she had already booked two luxury ski holidays in Canada;
Mrs Hartley was about to retire and enjoy her well earned wealth after working her way up from a council house to a luxury home.
It took seven hours and nine minutes for the jury, made up of eight women and three men, to unanimously find both Williams and Walsh guilty of the January 14 murder yesterday.
Williams remained emotionless as the verdict was declared. The killer – described in Walsh’s diary as a ‘bunny boiler’ – kept her eyes closed as she was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in jail without parole. Her accomplice Walsh was also found guilty of murder and sentenced to a minimum term of 25 years.
Watching on from the public gallery, Mrs Hartley’s children and her partner Mr Johnston fought back tears as the killers sat emotionless just yards behind them in the dock. Passing sentence, Mr Justice Turner said the murder was not a ‘crime of passion’.
He said: ‘It was a crime of obsession, of arrogance, of barbarity but, above all, it was a crime of pure evil. You knew all along that this was no game or fantasy. Sadie Hartley died for your amusement. Of course, the plot involved many labyrinthine twists and turns but, as you were both fully aware, this was no fiction. On the contrary, it was, from an early stage, leading to one and only one conclusion: the well-rehearsed and savage butchery of a blameless woman.
‘The meandering and overelaborate planning served to heighten your pleasure by deliciously postponing your ultimate and inevitable gratification.’
He added: ‘The murder method you adopted involved not only taking a knife to the scene but invading your victim’s home at night and slaughtering her like an animal by first incapacitating her with a massive electric shock to the head and then hacking and slashing her to death with almost unimaginable ferocity.’
Mrs Hartley’s son Harry, 25, said no words ‘could even come close’ to describe how he felt following his mother’s murder, adding: ‘These two monsters took one life and destroyed countless more.’
Mr Johnston, standing with his daughter, Hannah, 24, fought back tears before saying: ‘There can be no forgiveness for such vile behaviour.’ Previously, the court heard that Williams became obsessed with Mr Johnston following a year-long affair in 2013.
After he broke up with her, Williams sent Mrs Hartley a letter revealing the relationship and hoping to break them up. When it had the opposite effect and made the other pair closer, she turned her hatred on to the mother of two.
Walsh’s ex-husband Kevin, 58, said he was ‘very shocked’ by the sentence and had no explanation for what happened. He added: ‘I never saw a nasty streak in her.’