Wife and lover jailed for murdering millionaire farmer husband
A woman and her lover who shared violent fantasies of having sex in her wealthy husband’s blood have been jailed for his murder.
Angela Taylor, 53, and Paul Cannon, 54, killed farmer William Taylor, who vanished just before his 70th birthday.
Mr Taylor’s skeletal remains were discovered waist deep in mud on a riverbank near one of his farms, eight months after he vanished.
The victim had refused to grant his wife of 20 years a divorce.
She and her lover secretly shared graphic pornographic fantasies of torturing the landowner before his death.
Taylor sent Cannon a message saying she wanted to “get shot” of her husband.
Giving evidence, she told the court she didn’t mean she actually wanted to shoot him.
"It was just a phrase you say... I don't mean actually shooting someone,” she said.
The couple married in 1997 and had three children together.
Taylor and Cannon began a secret relationship in 2016.
She told the court: "I didn't want anyone to know, I didn't want to hurt the kids, I didn't want to hurt Bill."
Jurors at St Albans Crown Court convicted Taylor and digger driver Cannon after little more than 11 hours of deliberations at the end of a two-month trial.
Judge Michael Kay QC sentenced them to 21 years in prison.
Passing sentence at a packed St Albans Crown Court on Friday at the end of a two-month trial, Mr Kay: “Only Paul Cannon and Angela Taylor and perhaps an unknown accomplice know what happened that night.
“The evidence suggests that having been lured out of his house, William Taylor was attacked in the farmyard and killed there by means of strangulation or suffocation.
“(William Taylor) loved Angela Taylor to the end despite whatever she did to him and however much she did not deserve that love.”
He said the “primary reason” for the killing “may be simply the extent to which Angela Taylor in particular loathed the very sight of William Taylor and felt she could never be rid of him.”
