A “bully” who murdered his bride on their wedding night and stuffed her body into a suitcase has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 22 years. Powerfully-built Thomas Nutt, 46, punched and then strangled 5ft grandmother Dawn Walker. He hid her in a cupboard at their home, and later dumped her in a field.
Bradford Crown Court heard that Nutt broke her leg so he could fit her corpse into the suitcase, which he later tossed over a fence before hiding it in bushes, where her remains were found four days after they married. Nutt lied to her family, blaming her disappearance on her mental health, sent them false texts supposedly from her, and convinced her youngest daughter to help try to find her, all the while knowing she was dead.
He had controlled his 52-year-old victim for years and isolated her from members of family, her sister told the court. Sentencing, Judge Jonathan Rose told him: “Dawn Walker died because you are a bully, used to getting your own way with women, used to controlling and manipulating women and used to using your considerable size advantage to inflict violence on women if you considered it necessary to do so."
