They had it all...

Their two children, Jessica, 18, and Peter, 22, were doing well - Jessica studying for A-levels at Parkstone Grammar School and Peter at Portsmouth University doing a computing degree.

The couple were approaching their silver wedding anniversary and had recently returned from a trip to Hong Kong to celebrate this and Irena's 50th birthday.

They were financially comfortable, with Pearson - known to family and friends by his middle name, Maurice - receiving an £80,000 lump sum on taking early retirement from his IT manager job with Barclays in Poole in 1999.

They paid off the mortgage on their home, in Merriefield Avenue, Broadstone, and added a conservatory, utility room and new kitchen.

Pearson was to tell police he and his wife had "an excellent relationship and a good sexual relationship".

But beneath the surface, everything was far from rosy.

After retiring Pearson developed a taste for share dealing on the internet, with disastrous results.

Bournemouth Crown Court heard he lost all the money from a £26,000 insurance policy he cashed in and ran up credit card bills of £18,000 trading on the stock market in the months leading up to his wife's death.

Jane Miller QC, prosecuting, said he had also turned to gambling, spending around £200 to £300 a month on the National Lottery.

He was making transfers of large amounts of money from the couple's joint account to his sole account to pay off credit cards and Miss Miller claimed it was Mrs Pearson's discovery of this that led to the argument which caused her death.

She said: "He knew their debts were bigger than their savings and he had not told his wife this, or about the loan he had taken out, or about the size of the debts on their credit cards, or about the money he had lost.

"But she found out on Friday February 13. There must have been an argument. He hit her on the head many times in that beautiful new kitchen: at least 15 times with something that was blunt and light, with an edge to it that split the scalp into numerous fragments and caused the skull to split as well."

Pearson dialled 999 from his mobile phone just after 12.30pm that day, telling police he had just returned home from a shopping trip at Fleetsbridge Industrial Estate to find his wife dead.

But it took police just days to charge him with her murder.

Pearson failed to tell them he had dumped two plastic carrier bags at the tip in Nuffield Road that morning, where he was spotted on CCTV before also being caught on camera at the industrial estate.

The bags, which Pearson later claimed contained bottles of used cooking oil, were never found.

But Miss Miller said they were carrying his bloodied clothing and the murder weapon and that after dumping them he had got himself an alibi by visiting shops he knew had CCTV before returning home to the "dreadful scene".

Pearson later said he had failed to mention that trip initially because he thought it sounded incriminating.

He also told police he had left the house at 11.20am, but records showed his computer was not turned off until 11.44am. He offered no explanation when interviewed, except to say that he could not understand it.

But Pearson's final undoing came in a call from Linda Mole, the Portman Building Society employee who dealt with Mrs Pearson's enquiry that Friday morning.

She heard about the incident on the radio two days later and came forward with a vital piece of information that led to Pearson being charged with murder.

Mrs Mole told police that Mrs Pearson had seemed "quite upset, quite anxious" when it was confirmed that a cash withdrawal of £800 had been made from their joint account.

She promised to make further enquiries, but after she checked the signature on the withdrawal slip and confirmed it was Pearson who had made the enquiry, she was surprised to get no reply when she phoned Mrs Pearson back to relay the information just half an hour later.

Mrs Mole told the court: "I did try, but there was no answer. I let it ring for quite a while because she did say that she would be waiting and she had seemed quite anxious so I wanted to give her some information.

"I did try all day, about once every hour."

Pearson admitted to police that his wife did not know the extent of his money problems, saying he had kept it from her because she worried easily.

He said he had lied when she asked him if he had withdrawn the money and added that she had been "fine" about it, assuming she must have dropped the passbook in the street and that whoever picked it up had taken out the cash.

Pearson said: "She was perhaps a bit excited, but she wasn't cross, she wasn't angry. There was no shouting, there was no agitation."

He denied he had been frustrated that his wife had discovered the withdrawal and that there had been any argument about the money.

Pearson told the court he could never have killed his wife.

He added: "There's no way I could do it. I loved her too much."

The jury heard he had bought her a Valentine's Day card with a loving message on the front and that he had loved her "from the first day I went out with her to the day she was so brutally murdered".

But the jury at Bournemouth Crown Court did not believe him.

First published: Sept 10