Holding a 2ft length of rope he'd found in the garage Lee Ford walked up behind his wife Lesley and strangled her to death. Over the course of the next 24 hours the jealous and controlling killer would go on to murder his four step-children in exactly the same gruesome manner.
He then wrapped their bodies in sheets, covered them in lime and buried them in the woodshed at the bottom of the garden. The murders, which are the subject of true crime documentary The Killer in My Family on Quest Red tonight (Saturday), lay undiscovered for a month as Ford, then 33, embarked on an elaborate cover-up.
Tragic Lesley and her children Sarah Jane, 17, Anne Marie, 16, Steven, 14, and Craig, 13, were last seen alive at the end of August 2000. Ford told friends and neighbours in the quiet Cornish hill village of Carnkie that Lesley, 36, had left him and taken the children with her.
