Headteacher is jailed for stabbing wife and her lover to death

A FORMER headteacher who murdered his estranged wife and her new boyfriend on New Year’s Day has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 31 years.

Rhys Hancock stabbed Helen Hancock and Martin Griffiths to death at his former marital home in Duffield, Derbyshire, before calling police to say: “I’ve just murdered my wife in her bed.”

Derby Crown Court heard that the defendant, 40, who had three children with his wife, was found outside the property in a blood-stained shirt just after the murders, telling a police officer: “I’m hardly going to deny it. Look at me.”

Hancock inflicted 66 injuries on his 39-year- old wife using two kitchen knives he had taken from his mother’s house in Etwall.

Mr Griffiths suffered 37 injuries in the “brutal” attack – with a senior ambulance staff member describing it as “the most violent incident he had ever seen in over 17 years’ experience”.

The court heard how Hancock had discovered his estranged wife had started a new relationship with Mr Griffiths and on New Year’s Eve told his mother what he planned to do – saying he “would get 25 or 30 years in prison and that he would be released when he

‘The attack was merciless, there were elements of sadism and the intention was always to kill’

was in his 60s”. After leaving her house in the early hours of New Year’s Day, his mother dialled 999 on her mobile at 4.11am to say: “Please, you need to go. She has been with another man. My son found out on Friday night. He now has two knives and is on his way there.”

At 4.26am, the defendant called 999 himself, saying: “I have just stabbed them... there is blood everywhere. This has just happened. My children are safe at my mother’s house.”

Describing what happened, Michael Auty QC said: “There is no escaping these murders were premeditated, they were savage, the attack was merciless, there were elements of sadism and the intention was always ... and only to kill.

“Perhaps, above all else, they were committed in the coldest of blood.”

Mr Auty told the court the defendant had left his mother’s house with the knives, before returning moments later to “share a cup of tea with his mother one last time, as if it was his way of bidding her farewell”.

Mrs Hancock, a PE teacher, and Mr Griffiths, a father of two, were pronounced dead at the detached property shortly before 5am on Jan 1.

The defendant pleaded guilty to two counts of murder at a previous hearing.

Clive Stockwell QC, defending, said: “He is very alive to the fact that by his actions he has deprived his own children of the presence of their mother for the rest of their lives in the knowledge ... that it was their father who inflicted that bereavement on them.”