Had Joanna Brown’s children not had a break with their father, she would have had no need to open the security gates of her lovingly restored mock Tudor cottage, allowing her killer to drive in with the youngsters in the back of his car.

These are the thoughts — the ‘what-ifs’ — that torment Joanna’s anguished family every day.

After an increasingly bitter three-year divorce wrangle, Jo was so terrified of her husband Robert that she had taken the precaution of installing a hidden camera in her home in Ascot, Berkshire, and forbidden him from entering the house.

But that day her defences were down, with her thoughts only of welcoming home her children.

‘The day he killed her was the only time she was on her own,’ says Jo’s mother Diana Parkes, 72.

‘Every other time we’d made sure someone was with her when he dropped off the children, but that day her friend was delayed.’

What happened on October 31, 2010, at Tun Cottage is almost too horrific to describe.

Events could not have unfolded more perfectly for Brown, who arrived with a camping mallet, length of plastic sheeting and the type of white paper suit worn by police forensics officers to prevent contamination.

An argument flared and Brown picked up the mallet and hit his wife not once, but at least 14 times, around the head while his children — a girl aged nine and boy aged 11 — cowered out of sight in their playroom.

When Joanna was dead (her body bore no sign of defence injuries; she didn’t stand a chance), he wrapped her in the plastic sheeting, put a binliner over her head to avoid leaving bloodstains on the carpet and placed her in the boot of his Volvo 4x4.

He put the children into the back seat and drove off, later burying his wife in a crate inside a grave he had already dug in Windsor Great Park. Read More