Man convicted of ex-wife's murder

Ian Madden had been brooding for months, said the judge

A man who throttled his ex-wife because he could not accept she had a new life without him has been convicted of her murder at Southwark Crown Court.

Ian Madden, 53, started spying on his ex-wife Lynne, hacking into her emails and following her in December 2002.

After discovering she had a new boyfriend, he throttled her at her home while their children slept, and tried to make it look like suicide.

Madden, of Eaton Avenue, Greenford, west London, was convicted on Tuesday.

Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC told him the evidence showed he could not accept his ex-wife was "entitled to a life of her own".

She had begun French jive classes after the divorce and met Steve Squires, the man she began dating.

One dreads to think of the life-long torment you have inflicted upon your children Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC

Madden had spent months brooding over the situation and may have strangled her during an earlier confrontation, if his young son had not intervened, the judge said.

Prosecutor Anthony Leonard QC told the trial: "It may be he still harboured hopes that their relationship could start again, or at the very least he didn't like the thought she was seeing another man."

As the verdict was announced, two of Mrs Madden's friends shouted "yes" from the public gallery and her father shouted: "Rot in hell Madden".

The computer programmer is thought to have spent weeks tracking his ex-wife's movements, reading her emails and buying a small listening device to bug her home.

When he discovered she was seeing Mr Squires, he paid a final visit to her home in Havering-atte-Bower in Essex on 15 December 2002.

Children left with body

The jury heard Mrs Madden, 38, tried to fight him off, raking her fingernails down his face so hard some snapped off and fell to the floor.

He throttled her, winding a ligature around her neck to kill her.

When she was dead Madden tied a rope around his ex-wife's neck and threw the other end over a loft beam, before driving off, leaving their sleeping children alone with her body.

The couple's five-year-old son Ross woke up to find his mother lying in the hall with rope round her neck, the court heard.

Thinking she was just asleep, he got a knife from the kitchen and left it by her body - later telling police she could have used it to cut herself free "when she woke up".

The jury rejected Madden's claim that his wife was still alive when he left her.

The judge told him that, while he was adjourning sentencing for a psychiatric report, the law meant life imprisonment was inevitable.

He added: "Your ex-wife had everything to live for. One dreads to think of the life-long torment you have inflicted upon your children and upon Lynn's family."