[ad_1]
A former director has been jailed for a minimum of 31 years for murdering his estranged wife and lover on New Year’s Day.
Rhys Hancock killed Helen Hancock and Martin Griffiths at the old marriage home in Duffield, Derbyshire, and called the police to say, “I just murdered my wife in her bed.”
The Derby Crown court heard that the 40-year-old defendant was found outside the property in a bloodstained shirt just after the killings. He told a police officer: “I am hardly going to deny it. Look at me.”
Hancock, a father of three, inflicted 66 wounds on his wife with two kitchen knives he had taken from his mother’s home in Etwall. Griffiths received 37 wounded.
The court heard that before traveling the 10 miles to his old married home, Hancock told his mother of his plans.
The prosecutor, Michael Auty QC, said at the sentencing hearing: “There is no escaping that these murders were premeditated, they were savage, the attack was ruthless, there were elements of sadism and the intention was always… and only to kill. Perhaps above all, they were committed in the coldest of blood. “
The defendant pleaded guilty to two counts of murder at an earlier hearing.
After sentencing Hancock to life in prison with a minimum term of 31 years on Thursday, Judge Nirmal Shant QC said: “This was substantially premeditated and pre-planned. He had made up his mind to kill them both before leaving his mother’s house.
“What you did that night has deprived two families of the people they love and no sentence I impose will seem appropriate and nothing I do can fill the undoubted void that the deaths of Helen Hancock and Martin Griffiths have left in their lives.
“Your actions that night left your three children without a mother and Martín’s family without a son and his children without a father.”
After her son left the house, Denise Hancock called 999 on her cell phone at 4.11 am to say, “Please, you have to go. She has been with another man. My son found out Friday night. Now he has two knives and he’s headed there. “
Rhys Hancock had taken both landlines to Duffield and had attempted to locate his mother’s cell phone in an attempt to prevent her from alerting the police, saying, “I feel like I want to kill you.”
Auty said the operator “tried to persuade her to call Helen and let her know, but she had no idea what he would say.”
At 4.26 in the morning, the defendant called 999 and said, “I just stabbed you …”
A police officer arrived at 4.28 a.m. and Hancock was arrested moments later after saying he had entered the property through the back door without a key and went up to the bedroom.
In his opening statement, Auty said Hancock was on police bail at the time of the murders after he allegedly threw something at his wife in October 2019, causing her a laceration.
Clive Stockwell QC, defending, said: “The impact of your crime on New Year’s Day has damaged the lives of many people. He is well aware of the fact that by his actions he has deprived his own children of their mother’s presence for the rest of their lives knowing … that it was their father who inflicted this grief on them. “
