One-by-one Rahan Arshad carried his sleeping children downstairs and savagely beat them to death. Eight-year-old Abbas was still wearing his Spiderman pyjamas, Adam, 11, had on an England kit, while daughter Henna was just six-years-old.
Moments earlier Arshad, a taxi driver, had used a rounders bat to murder his semi-naked wife Uzma at their home on Turves Road, Cheadle Hulme. She suffered 23 injuries to her head in the unimaginable attack. Pathologists needed dental records to confirm the identities of the four victims.
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After slaughtering his entire family a blood-spattered Arshad cleaned himself down, scrubbed the bat, hid it in the shed and then packed a bag before fleeing to Thailand. The badly decomposed bodies were not discovered until almost a month later.
Investigating officer Det Supt Martin Bottomley would later describe it as the worst case he had ever dealt with, while Arshad would try to pin the children's murders on his dead wife, before eventually becoming one of the few dozen prisoners in the UK sentenced to a full life term in jail.
Rahan and Uzma were first cousins who wed in an arranged marriage in Pakistan in 1992. After the wedding Uzma joined her husband and lived in Burnage.
Neighbours described a lovely family. Uzma, originally from Lahore in Pakistan, was extremely house-proud and kept her home spotlessly clean.
But it wasn't a happy union. According to Uzma's friends Arshad regularly beat his wife and gave her hardly any money to run the household.
Not long after arriving in Manchester, Uzma started to wear glamorous western clothes, tight tops and jeans, instead of traditional Asian gowns. She started to work part-time as a beautician from home and as a school dinner lady to earn the money her husband was keeping from her.
This infuriated a jealous Arshad and earned the disapproval of some of the more traditional members of community. And that jealousy turned to outright hostility when Arshad began to suspect his wife was having an affair.
When Uzma returned to Lahore to mourn the death of her father, Arshad sold the family home in Burnage for £90,000, flew to Pakistan, dumped the children and disowned them, filed fake divorce papers and went travelling on the proceeds of the house sale. There were even claims he married another woman in Pakistan – although Arshad denied this in court.
When he eventually returned to the UK, he said he wanted to give the marriage another go. After the intervention of his brother-in-law, Rahat Ali, who acted as a father-figure and mediator, Arshad agreed to buy the house in Turves Road, and put the property in both names.
In an attempt to win over his wife he went on a lavish spending spree. He bought a £30,000 BMW 320, telling his wife it was an early birthday present. In fact, he had bought the car on HP, paid just one instalment and had insured it only in his own name.
The kids got a new computer, his wife was given bangles and gold jewellery for his wife, while the house was re-decorated with new fitted wardrobes, carpets and a new banister.
But Uzma continued to have grave doubts. "Count the days before he kills me," she told friends.
On July 28, 2006, Arshad took his family to Blackpool for the day. He told them they would also be going on holiday to Dubai in the following two days and during a shopping trip bought the £1.99 rounders bat and bucket and spades they would apparently be taking with them.
It was a lie. The only flight Arshad, who worked from Tripps Taxis, had booked was his planned escape to Thailand.
That night the couple rowed after he broke the news that there would be no holiday. He 'went for a drive', he claimed, to get away from his raging wife and when he returned carried out the slaughter.
Arshad's new silver BMW was recorded driving south along the M6 towards Heathrow by motorway cameras at around 7am on July 29. He left the car in a short-stay car park, boarding a flight to Bangkok later that day with £3,000 in Sterling and £1,160 in Thai currency.
On August 20, police found the four badly decomposed bodies at the house. Ms Rahan's partially clothed body was found in the master bedroom, covered with a beige towel. The children's remains, in their playroom on the ground floor, had been covered with bedsheets.
An international manhunt was launched. Arshad, who had travelled to the Thai resort Phuket before moving on to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia was arrested on August 30 as he tried to cross the border back into Thailand.
On his return to the UK Arshad denied killing his children. Instead he claimed Uzma had killed them and- that he then killed her in a rage.
On his arrest, Arshad told officers: "I confess to the murder." In the police station he added: "My beautiful kids. I don't regret killing that f****** bitch but my kids. Killing my kids."
He maintained the lie throughout a trial at Manchester Crown Court the following year. In court Arshad claimed Uzma had killed the kids because she had been depressed and that he reacted by killing her, lies which were easily unravelled under cross examination.
Even when facing the most severe questioning about the brutal deaths of his children Arshad showed little emotion and lost track of his own story. He said he blanked out after confronting Uzma and his next recollection was being naked in the bath holding the rounders bat. Later he said he found the bat in the sink.
Jurors at Manchester Crown Court saw through his lie, taking just two hours and 15 minutes to find him guilty of four counts of murder. He showed no reaction as the verdicts were read out, but members of Uzma's family could be heard to cry out 'Yes' and then broke down in tears.
Arshad was told his crimes were so brutal and horrific that he must serve life imprisonment for each of the killings and in his case, Mr Justice David Clarke told him: "Life means life." The judge added: "You killed your entire family in circumstances of great brutality. You beat your wife to death in your bedroom then coldly and deliberately you brought your sleepy children one by one downstairs to meet their deaths."
Outside court, Det Supt Bottomley admitted police might 'never really get to the bottom' of why Arshad killed his entire family.
"There are a number of theories but I don’t think we will know until he tells us," he said.
"I have never come across a case like this in my service. What is going through the mind of a man who killed his wife and then lined up children and then battered them one by one?"
In a heart-breaking statement outside court Uzma's brother Rahat Ali tried to sum up the family's devastation. "None of us could understand how a father could do such a thing to his own children and his wife," he said.
"I will never forget what I saw when I went to see Uzma and the children in the mortuary. They were just lying there and I was thinking 'what has he done to them'? The faces of our loved ones always come before our eyes."
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