Last updated 09:09, Saturday, 29 November 2008

Farmer Robert Wilson must serve a minimum 22 years in prison after a crown court jury this afternoon convicted him of murdering his wife so he could be with his secret lover.

Robert Wilson and Jane Wilson

• Listen to Robt Wilson's insurance call here
• Video: Farm murder special report

To hear Wilson's 999 call, click the audio bar above

The jury of six men and six women delivered a unanimous guilty verdict at around 2.10pm on Friday.

There were cries of “Yes” from the packed public gallery at Carlisle Crown Court. Wilson looked visibly shocked and stared at the floor.

Wilson, 41, almost got away with the killing after police initially treated the death of his 53-year-old wife Jane, a talented horse rider and popular rural post-woman, as a tragic farm accident.

Judge David Clarke QC said: "He has been found guilty of a particularly cruel, calculating and cold blooded murder.

"The death of Jane Wilson caused huge shock and grief.

"The family's grief has been aggravated by the late discovery that this wasn't an accident at all, but a brutal, calculated killing."

Wilson sat in the dock shaking his head while the sentence was read out.

Judge Clarke said he hoped the conclusion of the trial would give the family some closure because it was clear that Jane Wilson was a person of energy, positive temperament and that she would not have wanted her son and daughter to have their lives blighted by the grief of their loss.

He said the only mitigating factor for Wilson was the fact that he had no previous convictions and had been a hard working man but described him as an " accomplished, habitual and, at times, a manipulative liar."

During his four week trial at Carlisle crown court, Wilson’s tangled love life and the web of lies to constructed to keep it secret became the subject of intense scrutiny.

The prosecution said that Wilson murdered his wife because he feared a collision between the two halves of his life - that with his adoring wife Jane, and that with a secret lover he met in Spain.

He killed Mrs Wilson on December 1 last - the weekend his lover, blonde barmaid Kathy McNeil, 48, was due to visit him for the first time at his farm near Carlisle.

Wilson claimed that their relationship was purely sexual, saying he had no long-term plans with her.

From the day he met her, he lied to Mrs McNeil, saying his wife had died from cancer, and that the love of his life, a childhood sweetheart, died at the age of 18, her life cut short by a brain tumour.

He lavished thousands on the barmaid, treating her to expensive meals in post restaurants, hiring her a Mercedes car,and even splashing out £15,000 on a two week holiday for him and Mrs McNeil in the Maldives.

“He made me feel safe,” said Mrs McNeil. She remained unaware that Jane Wilson was alive and living in Cumbria during her 14-month relationship with the farmer.

Wilson told police his wife had low sex drive, and was happy for him to sleep with other women.

Mrs Wilson, he said, turned down the Maldives holiday - costing the equivalent of her annual salary at the Post Office - and even suggested he take Mrs McNeil.

But the prosecution argued that Wilson’s decision to kill his wife was triggered by his fear that his two worlds would collide if his wife found out about his lover.

In delivering their guilty verdict, the jury accepted that explanation.

Police were called to the couple’s farm at Kirkandrews-on-Eden, near Carlisle, on December 1 last year after Wilson dialled 999.

Officers and paramedics found a horrifying scene in the farm barn - Mrs Wilson lying dead next to a tractor, her head crushed so badly she was beyond recognition.

Wilson convinced everybody his wife’s death had been an accident. Her body was cremated following a funeral service at Carlisle Crematorium just five days later.

The farmer, who had lost his job with Story Rail after inventing a story that he had lung cancer to get time off work, was able to cash in two life insurance policies.

He may well have got away with murder had it not been for a chance discovery - and the courage of Sharon and Lee Kennedy, his wife’s children from her first marriage.

On Christmas Eve last year, they went to The Croft to collect Christmas presents that their mother had bought for their grandmother.
While there, they stumbled on evidence of their stepfather’s illicit love life.

They had the presence of mind to scan in and take copies of the love tokens Mrs McNeil had sent to Wilson, including a Valentine’s card and a Christmas card which was signed: “Merry Christmas, with all my love Kathy.”

Their suspicions raised, they contacted police and triggered one of the biggest murder inquires ever undertaken by Cumbria Constabulary.

But detectives faced a major hurdle - building a case against Wilson without the one piece of evidence that is normally central to any murder inquiry - the body.

They had to rely on the opinion of experts, including a Home Office pathologist who remarked on how pictures of the accident scene showed remarkably little blood.

That led Dr Alison Armour to conclude that Mrs Wilson was probably already dead when Wilson ran over her with his tractor.

The prosecution believed that was Wilson’s attempt to cover up the fact that he had already killed his wife in some other unknown way.

During the trial, yet more lurid details emerged of Wilson’s complex love life: even on the day he was arrested in April, he was in bed with another woman, farm helper Michelle Dodd, described in court as looking like a younger version of his late wife.

Wilson maintained that he loved and respected his wife, with whom he was due to retire to France.

But he later admitted that on two occasions in the month after Jane Wilson died, he slept with women - first Mrs McNeil and then Miss Dodd - in the marital bed, just yards from the wardrobe containing his wife’s wedding dress.

Mrs Wilson’s distraught family can today take comfort in knowing that the jury of six men and six women have foiled his attempt - so nearly successful - to get away with what for him could have been the perfect murder.