Man Who Garrotted His Family Gets Life
Sexual relationship with stepdaughter led to row that provoked jealous killer into committing five gruesome murders
By Paul Kelso
Originally published in The Guardian, May 25, 2001
A man who garrotted his wife and four step-children before burying them and attempting to cover up his crime was yesterday given five life sentences after pleading guilty to the murders in Bristol crown court. Lee Ford, 33, killed his step-children and his wife in a 24 hour period last year at their home in Carnkie, Cornwall, after Lesley Ford found that he had begun a sexual relationship with her eldest daughter, Sarah Jane, 17. The couple have two children of their own who were not attacked.
In late August last year Lesley, 36, threatened to stop Ford seeing the children, Sarah Jane, Anne Marie, 16, Steven, 14, and Craig, 13. After a row during which he hit her across the face with a rounders bat, he decided to kill them all.
Ford told police that he went to the garage to cool off after the row and while he was there found a rope. Picking it up he returned to the house, walked up behind Lesley and strangled her.
"The next thing I remember is she is lying on the floor dead," he told police. "I do not know why or what went through me. Lesley was killed in the bedroom, the four in the kitchen. They were strangled from behind with a rope. They did not know it was coming and neither of them knew another one had gone before them.
"That my own hands have done what they have done to five people with a rope is a nightmare. I do not even understand why I did what I did. Somewhere amongst the argument I snapped."
Ford wrapped the corpses in sheets, covered them in lime and buried them in the woodshed at the bottom of the garden. Weeks later he moved the bodies of Sarah Jane and Anne Marie, 16, re-burying them in a field four miles away.
Police established the timings of the killings by examining text messages sent by Sarah to colleagues at the McDonald's restaurant where she worked. The last one was sent at 2.37pm on August 30 2000. The final incoming message was sent by a friend on September 7, a week after she had been killed. It read: "Are you still alive."
The court was told that Ford had become "openly and forcefully" jealous of Sarah Jane's friendships with boys of her own age, a fact which helped explain the ferocity of the killings.
Nigel Pascoe QC, prosecuting, told the court the killings were not a crime of passion, but deliberate and considered.
"We say by any standards this was an enormous and pitiful tragedy and a tale of true horror … the sheer mechanics involved in five separate and virtually identical killings suggests a careful and planned homicide," he said.
After the murders Ford embarked on an elaborate cover-up and the bodies were not discovered until more than a month after the killings, when Mrs Ford's brother, Peter Wyatt, contacted police.
After the killings Ford cancelled a job interview, saying the entire family had gone down with food poisoning, and sent his surviving children to stay with relatives. He told neighbours that Lesley had moved out, taking her four children with her. He moved the youngest of his children to a new school and returned school books borrowed by Stephen and Craig, telling teachers they would not be coming back to the area.
He told the school that the children had left the area and affected normality by asking a neighbour if it would be possible to store Christmas gifts in his house to stop the children discovering them. He also at tempted to cash Sarah Jane's last pay cheque from McDonald's and made advances to a former girlfriend, telling her his wife had left him. After Mr Wyatt had contacted them, police visited Ford and were told that Lesley had left him, taking the children. The visit panicked Ford and shortly afterwards he began to move the bodies.
On October 4 police held a press conference appealing for help and revealed that Ford and his two children had also gone missing. Later that day Ford was stopped while driving across Bodmin Moor and the children were found safe with relatives. That night police discovered the first of the bodies.
Lesley met Ford in 1990, eight years after the breakdown of her marriage to the father of her children, Michael Tranter. Lesley and Ford lived first in Telford, before moving to Cornwall in 1995. Lesley did not work and Ford was only occasionally employed as a builder and a roofer. He spent much of his time drinking at the local cricket club where he was known as a strict and overbearing step-father, especially towards Sarah Jane.
The court heard that Ford's drinking was a source of friction between the pair, as was his short temper. He would get annoyed if he could not video programmes because the children were watching other channels, and at the time of the killing had become detached from the family, spending hours in the garage.
In May, 2000, Lesley saw a solicitor because she was concerned about the threat of violence and a possible sexual relationship between Ford and Sarah Jane. The solicitor contacted social services but no action was taken. At the time of the discovery Mr Tranter, the children's father, said: "My babies have been taken away from me. I just feel as if I have got nothing to live for. I just feel so empty."
Yesterday his brother, Andrew Tranter, said: "He [Ford] will get what he deserves. We are hoping that life will mean life. He took the lives of five people and he should get life without release himself."
