46-year-old Conrad Iyayi has been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his wife, who he stabbed to death at their home while their 11-year-old son slept upstairs.
The convict stabbed his wife, 52-year-old Kathryn Harris, seven times in the chest at their home in Oak Crescent, Littleover, Derby, on February 6, 2022.
The deceased is mum-of-three who worked at St Clares School in Mickleover as an art teacher.
According to the prosecutor, Gordon Aspden KC, the son had described the evening as “entirely normal” when interviewed by Police. Iyayi watched Match of the Day with his son on the night of 5 February, but the defendant called later that night from a nearby telephone box and said “I have killed my wife”.
After he was arrested, he told the Police that he had bought methadone online through the dark web and realized it was not what he thought it was but a drug that made him hallucinate.
He said: “I was hallucinating, my heart was beating making me think I was going to die. I woke up the next morning and walked past the kitchen where I saw my wife. What I thought was a dream must have been reality and I contacted the Police. I had no intention of harming Kathryn, prior to this incident we’d had a nice evening cooking together and watching TV.”
He pleaded guilty to murder.
In a victim impact statement, the couple’s son said he wanted nothing to do with his father.
“He’s taken the most important person from me. It’s really upsetting that I won’t get to make any more memories with my mum,” the statement said.
Likewise, the deceased adult daughter Phoebe Harris, who read out a statement on behalf of her and her sister Alexa, described the convict as sadistic and manipulative.
“We don’t see him as a human being as anyone with any humanity could not take someone else’s life in the way that he did. He is sinister, sadistic, and manipulative. We feel betrayed.”
Giving his verdict, Judge Shaun Smith KC said Ms. Harris “would have been conscious for at least part of the attack”, adding Iyayi had written to him accepting responsibility and saying he did not know why the murder happened.
“It was a brutal, frenzied killing, and a needless death. What you did in the early hours of that morning ended the life of a much-loved woman and emptied the lives of many others,” he said.
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