A BOYFRIEND who stabbed his partner more than 50 times with two knives has been jailed for life.
Ian Bennett was found guilty of murdering Kerry Woolley at her Warwick Road home in Olton last July and his mother, Lynda Bennett, was found guilty of helping him to cover it up.
Ian was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 25 years.
Lynda was sentenced to three years for perverting the course of justice and assisting an offender.
Ian, aged 38, was caught on CCTV throwing at least one of the two knives he used into a canal on Damson Lane in Solihull shortly after he’d brutally killed Kerry.
He was also seen on CCTV in Prospect Lane carrying a plastic bag into parkland nearby before returning to the car without the bag.
Lynda had driven him to the canal bridge.
Later that afternoon he called 999, telling police officers he had found the mother-of-two with catastrophic wounds to her neck at her flat.
Officers analysed text messages between the couple, who had only met a few weeks before, and they suggested that there had been a falling out following unfounded claims of her cheating on him.
A dashcam in Lynda Bennett’s car was also examined and indicated that the car had left the address Bennett shared with his parents in Moordown Avenue and took a 40 minute journey round the Solihull area.
Cell site data retrieved from her phone was consistent with the 63-year-old being the driver.
Another search, this time of the park land, resulted in a bag being recovered and inside were blood-stained women’s jogging bottoms and a pair of oven gloves.
Forensic examinations later matched Kelly’s DNA to both the knife from the canal and the blood-stained items found in the park.
Paying tribute to Kerry her family said: “We as a family never gave up hope that Kerry would turn her life around.
“We continued to support her throughout but Ian Bennett has taken that chance away and we will never forgive him for that.”
Detective Sergeant Rory Juss said: “Neither Ian Bennett nor his mother Lynda have once shown any remorse for their part in this terrible crime and it was pleasing to see that the evidence we were able to put before the jury enabled them to see through their lies.
“Our thoughts have always been with Kerry’s family, and we hope that Bennett’s conviction, and also that of his mother, can now bring them some comfort.”
