By Lucy Caulkett-
An evil police inspector has been jailed for at least 19 years for the “brutal killing” of his detective constable wife.
43 year old Darren McKie was sentenced at Chester Crown Court on Tuesday for the brutal murder of his 39 year old wife Leanne
The officer from Greater Manchester Police officer had admitted the manslaughter of his wife, found in Poynton Lake, Cheshire, on September 29 last year. However, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter nine days into his trial, just before he was due to give evidence.
Mr Justice Spencer said today: “I am quite sure that you did so not out of remorse, but simply as a damage limitation exercise.
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Sentencing him to life imprisonment, judge Mr Justice Spencer said: “You strangled her to death in the family home. It was a cruel killing.
Then, abusing your knowledge with criminal investigations and abusing the public trust in you as a senior police officer, you set about disposing of your wife’s body in a callous and despicable way.”
He added: “You have robbed your children of their mother and have robbed Leanne’s parents of their beloved only child.”
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Mckie had racked up debts of more than £100,000 fraudulently applying for loans in his wife Leanne’s name without her knowledge.
He made 15 loan applications in one day a week before his wife’s death – eight in his name and seven in hers. On the morning of her death Mrs McKie was at their Wilmslow home when her passport and salary details, accessed from the police system by her husband, were returned after being used in an application for a £54,000 loan.
Mckie returned home after she sent him text messages confronting him about the loan application and calling him a “liar”
He then strangled her before driving her car down the road to make it look as though she was not at home, before walking back to meet a surveyor who had come to value their house.
The surveyor described McKie’s demeanour as “perfectly normal”.
Witnesses saw him laughing as he picked his children up from school later that day.
During the night he drove his wife’s body to Poynton Park several miles away and threw her into the lake.
As he walked home he was stopped by a night shift police patrol before being allowed to continue his journey home.
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