Shocking brother-in-law murder

It was a killing that shocked a tight-knit community of Wolverhampton, writes

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When Mark Symonds was knifed to death on his way home from his favourite pub nearly two years ago, people living in Warstones demanded to know who had so violently taken one of their own.

Months of investigations by the police drew a blank.

The former Smestow School pupil was said in court to have not had any enemies, and was a popular figure at The Flying Dutchman in Penn. He had not been robbed and so police struggled to find a motive.

It was only when they decided to widen their search to his family that the killer was unmasked.

Yesterday Wolverhampton law student Peter Britten was sentenced to a minimum of 15 years behind bars for the cold-blooded slaughter of his brother-in-law Mark, who was slain in the street as he walked home on November 2, 2005.

The 28-year-old, of Pennwood Court, was knifed once in the back and nine times in chest and bled to death.

Peter Britten had known Mark since the age of 14 and they were childhood friends.

"We would hang around in the same group of friends up until we were 17-year-olds," Britten told police when he was initially interviewed as a witness.

"That was when Mark started to mix with another group and go another direction in his life." But the bond did not end there. Britten began to see Mark's sister Clare when he was 21 and she was 15. Mark was said to have become protective over Clare and tension between the former friends grew.

The court was told Britten became "fed up" with Mark's behaviour.

On the afternoon of the killing, Britten made a sinister search of the internet using words including 'how to kill a man', 'assassins' and 'strangulation'.

Police who seized his PC found Britten had even researched DNA techniques and the violent attack on Abigail Witchalls, who was left paralysed after being stabbed in front of her young son.

A month after Mark's death, there was a Google search for model Rachel Nikell, who was murdered on Wimbledon Common in 1992.

Britten stabbed Mark 10 times after he left The Flying Dutchman after watching a Manchester United match.

Neighbours came out to help and told of the grim moment the phone rang on the body of the dying father.

But Britten, a former pupil at Penn's Highfields School, kept his deadly secret to himself.

He was only arrested after he and other members of Mark's family were DNA tested.

A detective who carried out the procedure said Britten had appeared hesitant and had raised concerns over whether his genetic makeup would be kept on a national database.

When police confronted him with pictures of Mark's body, he said simply: "Poor sod didn't deserve that."