Man gets life for roof box murder

Andre Genestin initially concealed Catherine's body in the house

A man has been jailed for life after bludgeoning his wife to death and hiding her body in a car roof top box.

Judge Anthony Scott-Gall said Andre Genestin would serve a minimum of 20 years after being found guilty of murdering his wife Catherine, 38.

"This was a crime carried out with a savage brutality that any decent person would find hard to comprehend," he told Genestin, 48, from Brighton.

Genestin used a mallet to crush his wife's skull as she sat on their sofa.

He then hid her body in a plastic roof box in the couple's garden in Maresfield Road.

Mrs Genestin's decomposed remains were found by police officers in June 2007.

'No remorse'

In the weeks after the murder, which happened some time between 11 and 14 May 2007, French national Genestin carried on life as normal.

A jury at Lewes Crown Court took less than two hours to convict him on the "most compelling evidence".

The judge said on Thursday that Genestin had launched a "ferocious" attack on his wife which caught her wholly unprepared, as was illustrated by the lack of defence injuries on her body.

He added that Genestin had expressed no remorse or humility for his crime which would have a long-lasting effect on all those close to Mrs Genestin who were left behind.

During the two-week trial, jurors heard it was only after the couple's young daughter repeatedly raised her concerns about her mother's disappearance with her teachers that social services and the police investigated.

Genestin ordered the roof top box on the internet, and local children played with the packing when it arrived at their home.

When asked by police whether she had been near the box, the daughter said: "Yes, I've even been standing on it and sitting on it. I was pretending it was a slide and sliding down."

Judge Scott-Gall said: "The fact that the daughter will grow up knowing that she had been playing in the back garden where her mother lay murdered is unequivocally an aggravating factor."