By Phil Coleman

Last updated 13:24, Monday, 01 December 2008

THE heartbroken first husband of murder victim Jane Wilson has told how she dumped him after discovering he’d cheated on her.

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Jane Wilson: ‘She was an angel’

Former Carlisle man Kevin Kennedy, 54, the estranged father of Mrs Wilson’s two adult children Lee and Sharon, broke down when he learned about his ex-wife’s murder in a newspaper.

In an emotional interview speaking exclusively to the News & Star on the anniversary of Jane’s death, he painted a picture of her as a loving, caring woman.

She would never have tolerated Robert Wilson sleeping with other women, he said.

The former oil rig worker said: “She’d never have allowed that kind of thing – she was an angel.”

Mr Kennedy’s comments are compelling proof of how Jane’s second husband Robert Wilson, 41, tried to taint his dead wife’s memory by telling hurtful lies about her.

During his four-week trial at Carlisle Crown Court, Wilson claimed his wife had a low sex drive and was happy for him to sleep around – provided it was not near home.

An accomplished serial liar, Wilson even said that his wife – said to have worshipped her husband – suggested that he take his lover on a £15,000 holiday to the Maldives.

Wilson had denied murdering his 53-year-old wife at their Kirkandrews-on-Eden farm near Carlisle.

But the jury delivered a unanimous guilty verdict after hearing how he told a series of astonishing lies, and claimed his wife’s death had been a tragic accident.

Central to his deception was the claim that his wife knew about his lover. The prosecution believe he killed Jane Wilson so he could start a new life with Kathy McNeil, 48, after telling her his wife had died 14 months before she did.

In an exclusive interview with the News & Star, Mr Kennedy, now living in London with his second wife Joan, 54, said: “I didn’t know that Jane had died until a couple of weeks ago.

“I’d bought a national newspaper and after sitting down to read it saw a photo of Jane staring out at me.

“It was a report about the murder trial. It broke my heart: I cried, and cried.”

Mr Kennedy, 54, whose career was wrecked by a motorbike accident that put him in a wheelchair for two years, was appalled to read Wilson’s claims that Jane turned a blind eye to his sexual exploits outside marriage.

Mr Kennedy said: “I couldn’t believe it.

“Straight away, my reaction was the realisation that he was a bare-faced liar. Jane was a lovely, lovely person.

“I met her in 1976, when I was 20 and she was 21. We hit it off straight away. We started going out and married six months later.

“She’d do anything for anybody: Jane had great sense of humour and she would help anybody. She really was a loving, caring person.

“We broke up because, just once, I went with somebody else and she found out about it. I admitted it.

“But she was absolutely broken hearted over it. She nearly had a nervous breakdown, and came out in a skin rash.

“I felt awful, sick at heart. I’ll never forget the moment when she confronted me about what I’d done.

“She broke down, crying and she threw me out.

“She took me back two weeks later, but she couldn’t cope with it. That’s when she told me that she was divorcing me.

“She’d really trusted me and couldn’t believe that I’d do something like that.

“She had to go to the doctor and ended up on antidepressants.”

Even after they split, Jane continued to care for Kevin, bringing him cooked meals at his bedsit in Carlisle and bringing the two children for regular visits.

Unable to bear losing Jane, or the thought that she may one day find somebody else, said Mr Kennedy, he left Carlisle for good and eventually remarried.

He has not spoken to neither 30-year-old Lee nor Sharon, 32, for more than a decade.

He hopes that the tragedy of Jane’s murder may improve his chances of a reconciliation with them, but he accepts they may not want that.

“They’ve had enough to cope with and if they don’t want to see me I’ll understand.”

Mr Kennedy said he spoke to the News & Star because he wanted to show just how distorted a picture was painted of her in court by Wilson, last week jailed for life, with a 22-year minimum term.

Mr Kennedy added: “I can only say good things about Jane. She left me because I messed around, and I was lucky I didn’t get blown out of town with a shotgun.

“She wouldn’t have allowed her husband to get away with that kind of thing. I begged her to take me back but she just wouldn’t do it.

“I didn’t want to lose her but I’d done the damage and it was too late. She really was a lovely, trusting person, and there was nothing devious or sneaky about her.

“She’d never do anything to harm anybody else.”

Police believe Wilson killed his wife, on December 1 last year, because he feared a collision between his two lives – that with Jane and that with his lover, who had planned to visit him over the weekend of Jane’s death.

He said his relationship with Mrs McNeil was merely a sexual fling, yet he included her in his will, giving her 45 per cent of his estate in the event of his death.

Despite claiming to love his wife, he slept with two women in the marital bed, feet away from his dead wife’s wedding dress in the wardrobe, within a month of Jane’s death.

The murder investigation began after Sharon and Lee stumbled on evidence of their stepfather’s affair. The judge said he was guilty of a brutal, calculated, and cold-blooded murder, done partly for the life insurance and partly because he wanted a new life with Kathy McNeil.

She was unaware of his deceptions, and gave evidence for the prosecution.

PColeman@cngroup.co.uk