A man has been jailed for at least 30 years for stabbing to death a woman at an Aldi supermarket.
Neville Hord, 44, pleaded guilty to murdering Jodie Willsher at the store where she worked in Skipton, North Yorkshire, on 21 December.
The 30-year-old mother of one died from injuries to the chest and abdomen inflicted during the knife attack.
Bradford Crown Court heard it was a “cold-blooded public execution” carried out “for the purpose of revenge”.
Prosecutor Peter Moulson QC told the court Hord was the ex-partner of Mrs Willsher’s mother, Nicole Dinsdale.
He said the attack, which was caught of CCTV and witnessed by many people – including a child, was pre-planned and that Hord had also taken an axe with him.
Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC told Hord he was “truly and horribly rotten to the core”.
He added: “You chose a time and a place to, in effect, execute, to kill, to murder.”
Mrs Willsher was stabbed several times before Hord was stopped and restrained by members of the public.
Mr Moulson said Hord told police: “Jodie made things very difficult in my and her mother’s relationship.”
He said the defendant admitted putting a tracking device on Mrs Willsher’s car and had been planning the killing for two weeks, buying a pistol crossbow as an “option weapon” and taking the axe as “back up”.
Hord admitted he went to the store to kill Mrs Willsher and told officers he thought she had smiled at him as they made eye contact before he stabbed her, the prosecution said.
In a statement read to the court, Mrs Willsher’s husband Malcolm said his life and that of his daughter, Megan, had been ripped apart.
He said Jodie and her daughter had an “unbreakable bond” and described how Megan had been looking forward to opening her Christmas presents with her mother.
At an earlier hearing, Hord’s family passed a statement to the media via his lawyers in which they expressed their “sincere condolences” to the Willsher family and added: “No words can convey our sorrow for this tragic turn of events.”
Source: bbc.co.uk
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