Man who killed wife by stabbing her 25 times jailed

AUCKLAND - A 48-year-old Scottish immigrant to New Zealand who brutally stabbed his wife 25 times with three butcher knives - breaking two of them and bending the third at a 90 degree angle - has been jailed for life.

Butcher Peter Lamont will spend a minimum of 14 years behind bars after being found guilty of murdering his wife Lindsay in their home in Ikamatua July 5, 2009, the New Zealand Press Association reported Thursday.

“It must have been a horrifying sight to see Lindsay’s body lying on the floor of a blood-spattered kitchen,” Justice Christine French said while delivering the sentence at the Greymouth high court.

Lindsay Lamont had two daughters - Stacey, who had remained in Scotland when the Lamonts migrated to New Zealand, and Fallon, who was aged five when she travelled with them.

“I feel like my world has shattered around me and there seems no way to put the pieces back together again,” Stacey said in the court.

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

Fallon, now 18 years old, had regular flashbacks “to the morning I was told by the man that I called dad that he had killed my mum”.

“I was only 17 when I had to arrange my mother’s funeral, pick the clothes, flowers and songs, and worst of all, pick the casket.”

Lamont, who was drunk when he committed the murder, tried to end his own life by sleeping with the car running in his garage. In the morning, he drove 50 km to buy some clothesline, which he used in an attempt to hang himself, but the rope stretched.

He later phoned Fallon, asking her to meet him outside the Greymouth police station, where he confessed to her and the police.