Life for Scots butcher who killed wife in frenzied knife attack

A SCOTTISH butcher who murdered his wife in a frenzied knife attack in their New Zealand home has been jailed for life.

Peter Lamont lashed out during a row over money and stabbed his wife Lindsay 26 times in her face and neck at the couple's home in Ikamatua, near the Victoria Forest Park on the west coast of the South Island.

The High Court in Christchurch heard that the attack was so savage that Lamont, 48, who had been preparing food when the row started, broke two knives in the process and bent a third to a 90-degree angle.

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He continued the attack even after his wife had collapsed to the floor. Fragments of the shattered blades were later found in her body.

A pathologist said that Mrs Lamont, 49, had died from "torrential internal and external blood loss".

The butcher, who left Govan with his family in 2005, then made two bungled attempts to kill himself in their garage, but failed because he fell asleep.

The next morning, he drove to the local supermarket, bought beer and rope, and had breakfast at a fast food restaurant. He went to his butchery, where he drank, asked someone to look after Mrs Lamont's daughter Falon, 17, and again tried to kill himself in the chiller room.

Finally, after leaving a note saying "Sorry Lindsay", he arranged to meet Falon at the local police station where he confessed: "I've killed your mum."

The court heard that Mrs Lamont's two daughters, Stacey and Falon were "shattered", with Falon forced to arrange her mother's funeral in New Zealand before taking her ashes back to Scotland.

Justice Christine French yesterday told Lamont he had displayed a "high level of brutality" but accepted he had shown "genuine" remorse.

She said Lamont would be eligible to apply for parole in 14 and a half years.

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She said: "For all you knew, she may well have been saved if you had called an ambulance instead of going back to the knife drawer.

"It must have been a horrifying sight to see Lindsay's body lying on the floor of a blood-spattered kitchen."

Crown prosecutor Lisa Preston read victim impact statements from Mrs Lamont's two daughters, Stacey, who had stayed in Scotland when the Lamonts emigrated to New Zealand, and Falon.

Stacey Cowan said: "I feel like my world has shattered around me and there seems no way to put the pieces back together again."

She said she had not enjoyed a full night's sleep since hearing of her mother's brutal death, and was plagued by nightmares about "the pain and terror and the betrayal from someone mum had known for 12 years".

Falon, now living with relatives in Renfrew, had constant flashbacks "to the morning I was told by the man that I called 'dad' that he had killed my mum".Friends of Lindsay told how they begged her to leave her husband before her death, and say she suffered physical and emotional trauma at the hands of her husband for years before her death.

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