A MAN who killed a love rival with a samurai sword in Somerset in a ‘cold-blooded execution’ has been jailed for life.
Michael Bretton, 41, of Armoury Yard, Shaftesbury, Dorset, killed 39-year-old lorry driver Craig Hurcombe, from Wiltshire, with a samurai sword after going to his workplace on New Year’s Day this year to ‘confront him’.
He then buried Mr Hurcombe in a shallow grave on the site, set his clothes, car and body on fire, before using Mr Hurcombe’s SIM card to impersonate him after murdering him, a court has heard.
Today (July 31), Bretton was found guilty of Mr Hurcombe’s murder by a unanimous guilty verdict at Bristol Crown Court despite his claims that Hurcombe fell and impaled himself.
Judge William Hart jailed Bretton for life and ordered him to serve a minimum of almost 29 years in prison.
Earlier in the trial
Earlier in the trial, the prosecution described this as a ‘premeditated and cold-blooded execution’ born from Bretton’s ‘obsession’ with Ms Katy Saunders, from North Somerset.
Bristol Crown Court heard that Bretton and Mr Hurcombe had both, at different times, been in relationships with Ms Saunders, from Portishead, North Somerset.
Bretton met Ms Saunders online and had a short casual relationship with her before she ended the relationship with him and rekindled her past relationship with Mr Hurcombe.
Mr Hurcombe was last seen alive, waving on CCTV footage as he arrived at his job at Blanchard’s Yard in Gurney Slade, Somerset at around 6.26pm on January 1 of this year.
Bretton admitted to following Mr Hurcombe to his place of work using a tracking device he left on Hurcombe’s car but claimed he only intended to have a word with Hurcombe.
The court previously heard from Dr Amanda Jeffrey, a Home Office forensic pathologist, who said Mr Hurcombe died from a 'gaping horizontal stab wound' which caused 'catastrophic damage' to his heart and internal bleeding.
She said: "The wound resulted in extensive internal bleeding and catastrophic damage to the heart.
"The severity of the damage to the heart would result in swift and instantaneous collapse and cardiac arrest."
She concluded in her post-mortem report that the force used to create the wound would have been at least moderate.
Previously in the trial, when Bretton took the stand, he described the incident as a ‘tragic accident’, during which Mr Hurcombe fell onto a metal shaft at his workplace.
He then admitted to burying Mr Hurcombe in a shallow grave on the site, setting his clothes, car and body on fire and taking Mr Hurcombe's SIM card and impersonating him after his death.
This included Bretton texting Ms Saunders, using Mr Hurcombe’s SIM card, encouraging her to give him (Bretton) another chance.
Mr Mark Cotter KC previously told the jury that Bretton's response to Ms Saunders' repeated rejections was one of an ‘obsessive and jealous man who became fixated on Craig Hurcombe.’
Mr Cotter, who described this case as ‘the stuff of nightmares,’ said: "He [Bretton] has a warped view of the world and a dark aspect to his character that makes him an incredibly dangerous individual."
After the jury reached its verdict, Judge William Hart described the case as 'extraordinary'.
He said: “If you read about this case, you would think it is something from a crime novel.”
Judge William Hart sentencing
Judge William Hart said: “You were found guilty by this jury after a three-week trial of the murder of Craig Hurcombe and it now falls to me to sentence you for this offence.
“We heard of the turbulent side of Craig’s relationship with [Ms Kate Saunders] and how he let himself down in his relationship with Kate at times. Was that the man he was? No. He was a caring man who was loved by friends and family who all feel his loss.
“The victim personal statements, and I emphasise what Mr Langdon said, that Kate is blameless in this terrible story.
“The wholly fabricated account you gave of the way that Craig died, an account that both in its content and in the way you told it convinced me that you are a very dangerous man with an obsessive personality.”
The judge described Bretton’s murder of Mr Hurcombe as a ‘cowardly and secret attack’ and said he (Bretton) is ‘self-centred’ and feels sorry for himself in a way that is ‘obscene’.
He said: “When Mr Cotter opened this case for the crown, he described this murder as premediated, he was entirely accurate in using that word.
“He characterised the killing of Craig as an assassination, a strong word for any prosecutor to use, and I wondered whether it is a word that shouldn’t have been used but as his case has played out, I am satisfied this is no exaggeration.”
The judge said Bretton was ‘fuelled by jealousy’ and a refusal to accept he had be excerpted from Ms Saunders’ life.
He said: “It wasn’t love; it was because your dignity had been affronted.”
“On the first of January you went under the cover of darkness, and you found him alone, you hoped you would find him alone, and you took with you a most fearsome weapon, a samurai sword.
“You went there intending to murder him and you did exactly that.
“You crept around the yard, found there was a way in without using the front entrance gates, you were dressed in black with your sword hidden, you took him by surprise.
“You slew him. He tried to fend off the sword, and suffered cuts to his fingers and one to his scalp, but it was hopeless and in vain.
“You thrust that blade through the entire thickness of his body. An extraordinary injury.
“The sort of injury more associated with historical battle than modern-day life.
“The only mercy for his family may be that he must have died almost instantaneously and would have only suffered for a moment or two.
“What did you do then? You dragged his body away, you stripped him of his clothes, you burned his clothes and his body. You buried him in a shallow grave face down, and you took the SIM card from his phone.”
The judge mentioned the fact Bretton took 10 days impersonating Mr Hurcombe, using his SIM card, to convince everyone in his life that he was alive in a ‘series of heartless messages.’
He said: “You prolonged their uncertainty, and their agony, and raised their hopes just to dash it.
“The evidence against you was strong and compelling, but there was a clinching piece of evidence, and that was discovered by your own mistake and a mistake I am sure all involved in this case hope haunts you.
“It was the disposal of the sword. You had your mother’s car, you drove to that layby by the bridge, and you threw that sword, the murder weapon, into the river. What you had forgotten was that the tracker was still in the car.”
The judge said the tracker showed his journey from the scene of the murder to the location where the sword was later discovered by a police dive team.
He said this error was the final piece of evidence to convict Bretton of what he had done to Mr Hurcombe.
He also described the fact that Bretton tried to insinuate that someone else had discarded a samurai sword at the same point he stopped off as ‘so fanciful as to be discounted’.
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