Desperate for fame - he slaughtered my sister
Me and Karen, right
Wednesday 13th June 2007
The similarities between my older sister Karen's ex-boyfriend, Peter Martin, and England footballer Sol Campbell were few and far between. One was a professional footballer, who earned up to £5 million a year. The other was nothing more than an unemployed labourer.
The footballer lived in a £12 million mansion, while the dole-claimant lived in a two-bedroom council house. But even though they were worlds apart, Peter reckoned that, four years earlier, he'd signed himself up with a celebrity agency in Manchester for work as a Sol Campbell lookalike.
'Did he ever get any work?' I giggled to Karen, 37.
'There was talk of him opening a Chinese restaurant in Dudley, but the job went to a David Beckham lookalike instead,' she said.
We fell about. Well, we had to laugh, or else we would have cried.
Poor Karen had been through hell over the past 18 years at the hands of Peter. They'd met when she was 19, and had two kids together, Lloyd, 15, and Marissa, 12. At 6ft 4in, with dark skin and jet-black hair, Peter was striking all right. And he had the swagger and cockiness to match. He seemed to think he really was Sol Campbell.
One word summed him up: Idiot. Both me and our mum, Beverley Hartshorne, 57, nagged Karen to leave him. And now, finally, in December 2005, she had.
'What'll he do now?' I asked.
'Who cares?' she grinned back at me.
I recognised that twinkle right away.
'You've got a new bloke, haven't you?' I smiled.
'Might have,' she winked.
It turned out Karen had been seeing a man called Paul Round, 38, for two weeks. He was a security guard at the shopping centre in Dudley where Karen worked as a trainee manager for Clinton Cards. And I really hadn't seen her this happy in years.
Trouble was, I had the nasty feeling Peter wasn't going to disappear that easily. Three weeks later, I picked up the phone to hear Karen's voice.
'Peter's cut up all my clothes,' she sobbed.
My heart sank.
'He pretended to Lloyd he needed to collect a few things while I was out,' she explained. 'When I got back, he'd cut up my new boots and smeared them with dog's muck.'
Of all the disgusting...
Luckily, Karen moved happily on with her life. Thanks to Paul.
'We had a brilliant night out,' she said on the phone, a week later.
'That's the spirit,'
I laughed. 'It takes more than some wannabe footballer with a bag of poo to keep my sister down.'
That afternoon, me and my husband, Darren, 33, nipped over to my mum and dad's house.
We'd barely managed to get through the door when Darren's mobile rang. I watched him listening, then the colour drained from his face.
'What?' I hissed.
'It's Karen's neighbour,' he said. 'Peter's attacked her.'
I went to jump in the car but my dad, Peter Hartshorne, 61, held me back.
'Stay here with your mum,' he ordered.
After what seemed like hours, Darren finally rang.
'He... he's killed her,' he stammered.
Mum and I clung to each other. What followed is still a blur. I drove to Karen's, but I couldn't get near the place. Police tape fluttering in the breeze... Darren holding me back. Later that afternoon, the police came to see us at Mum's. Karen had been at home with Paul when Peter broke in. In a jealous rage, he'd slashed Karen's throat. Paul had escaped unharmed.
Peter was found later by police. He'd been threatening to jump off a bridge near the M6. My head was a mess.How could we have misread the situation so badly? I'd had Peter down as an idiot, not a cold-blooded killer.
The next day, the police introduced us to Paul. It was the first time we'd ever met him. Hardly the way I'd imagined meeting my sister's new boyfriend.
'How are you?' I croaked eventually.
But he didn't answer.
He just sat there, staring blankly ahead. God knows what horrors that poor man had seen.
As the weeks passed, I was horrified to discover more and more about my sister's life with Peter. Karen's friends had given statements. They said he'd regularly beaten her. Why hadn't she told us? At least we were on hand to help look after Lloyd and Marissa. Frightened and bewildered, the poor little mites needed all the help they could get.
In December 2006, Peter appeared at Wolverhampton Crown Court. He pleaded guilty to Karen's murder and not guilty to the attempted murder of Paul. The court heard that he couldn't deal with Karen introducing Paul to the children. He'd broken in, raging that he'd
kill them both. He'd stabbed her six times with such force, the knife had come right through the other side of her stomach. Peter was found guilty of the attempted murder of Paul, as
well as Karen's murder, and was sentenced to life with no parole.
Six months on, I'm struggling to come to terms with Karen's death. I miss her warmth and laughter, and can't help torturing myself with thoughts of what she could have made of her life. I had that monster down as pathetic, a wannabe with hopeless aspirations of fame. And now he is famous. For being a murderer. How do you like your new-found notoriety now, Peter?
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