'You crammed her bleeding and still warm body into a suitcase and dumped it like rubbish...' Judge condemns Kirsty's 'cold, callous, calculating and utterly selfish' killer.

Byline: Robin Turner

A HUSBAND who murdered his wife, put her body in a suitcase and dumped it off an M4 bridge was beginning a minimum of 19 years in jail today.

Paul Grabham, 26, had denied murdering his 23-year-old wife Kirsty during a month-long trial at Swansea Crown Court.

Yesterday he was branded "cold, callous, calculating and utterly selfish" by trial judge Mr Justice Butterfield. Kirsty's mother Catherine Bloomfield spoke of her disgust at how her daughter's body was "discarded like a piece of trash".

During the trial it emerged that the married couple ran a sex-for-hire business from their Swansea home, spent pounds 1,000 a week on cocaine and had casual sex with strangers they contacted over the internet. They were last seen together having a row during a night out in Swansea. Grabham is thought to have killed the model after she arrived home after him.

In the days after he killed his wife, Grabham said he had sex with a prostitute and two female friends. He fobbed off Kirsty's worried family by saying his wife had left him.

But police found Kirsty's blood on his clothes and all over their flat at Mount Pleasant, Swansea. Then, 10 days after her disappearance, a lorry driver unzipped the discarded suitcase in a remote lane off the M4 at Cefn Cribbwr near Bridgend.

Yesterday, a jury took just five hours to unanimously find Grabham guilty.

In a packed and tense courtroom, Kirsty Grabham's friends and family cheered loudly on hearing the foreman utter the word "guilty".

Sentencing Grabham to life with a minimum 19 years before parole, trial judge Mr Justice Butterfield said: "Just over a year after you promised to love and cherish your new bride you battered and strangled her to death.

"It was a vicious and sustained attack fuelled by drink and drugs you'd taken.

"As if that was not terrible enough, she was not even, in death, to get the decency and dignity she was without doubt entitled to. You crammed her bleeding and still warm body into a suitcase and dumped it like so much rubbish into a place where you undoubtedly hoped it would not be found for many years."

After killing his wife and placing her body in the suitcase, said the judge, Grabham then pursued "prostitutes, old girlfriends and those interested in casual sex".

He told the defendant, who displayed no emotion: "Your actions were cold, callous, calculating and utterly selfish. "During this trial I've looked for the merest flicker of remorse or regret from you, but I've seen none."

Grabham, displaying a tattoo reading "Kirsty" down one side of his neck, limped to holding cells on crutches after slipping and breaking an ankle during a break earlier in the trial.

The couple met at a massage parlour in Bridgend where Kirsty used the name Megan and they married two months later in February 2007.

Kirsty's mother was opposed to the union from the start and urged her daughter not to marry Grabham.

She said: "He would not leave her alone. He was kissing and cuddling her all the time in my company."

She added her daughter had been a big fan of the model Katie Price, also known as Jordan, who re-married this week.

She said: "Kirsty had ambitions to be a model. She wanted to be like Jordan and she had sent photos off to magazines to try to get them published."

Mrs Bloomfield, speaking of the impact Kirsty's death had on her and her family, added: "Paul Grabham has not only taken my baby from me but he has also robbed me of being a grandmother to Kirsty's babies. He has robbed Sonia and Hayley of their devoted sister."

Speaking of her daughter's now well-publicised life as a sex worker, she said: "Many things have been said in court about Kirsty's working and social life.

"But I want people to know the person she really was to us.

"She was a kind, loving, caring person who would do anything for anybody.

"I remember once after a photo session she donated the fee to a breast cancer charity even though she could have done with the money herself.

"She gave money to starving children in Africa via direct debit from her bank, that was Kirsty."

She added: "I'll never forget the last time I saw Kirsty in the mortuary.

"I did not recognise her face because she was so battered and bruised.

"I only knew it was her because of the shape of her eyebrows and the piercing above her lips.

"Paul Grabham did all of that but then compounded our grief by making us believe she was still alive. He lied to us over and over and set about to cheapen her death still further by living a playboy lifestyle until his arrest."

The evidence against Grabham was overwhelming, neighbours having heard their violent row, then silence following by scraping, brushing and "dragging" sounds.

Grabham even painted over blood spots on the ceiling claiming to police he had done the work weeks earlier, but forensic scientists found it was clearly fresh.

Det Chief Insp Dorian Lloyd who headed the murder investigation said after the verdict: "The judge was right, he was really cold, really calculating and really selfish.

"Not once in our dealings with him did he show any remorse for the death of his wife."

Kirsty's sister Sonia Duignan said: "The day Kirsty died our hearts died along with her. We never even had the chance to say goodbye.

"The sentence passed on Paul Grabham is nothing compared to the life sentence imposed on us."

She added: "Our lives will no longer be complete without our pink princess."

On the court steps, Mrs Bloomfield read out a poem previously written to her by her daughter.

She said in it she described a mother as a "bank where her children can deposit all her hurt and worry". The poem concluded with the footnote: "I love you lots and lots. You are the best mother ever."

CAPTION(S):

MURDERER: Grabham showed no remorse MURDER SCENE: Grabham killed Kirsty in their Swansea flat DEVASTATED: Kirsty's sister Sonia Duignan and mother Catherine Bloomfield outside court yesterday

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Publication:	Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales)
Geographic Code:	4EUUK
Date:	Feb 5, 2010
Words:	1036
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