A murderer who stabbed a dad-of-two through the heart has been jailed for life with a minimum of 22 years.
Adam Fletcher killed 30-year-old Paul Stenson on Princess Drive, West Derby less than a week before Christmas last year after the pair had an argument at a house party.
Fletcher, 28, had denied murder but was found guilty by a jury after a six-week trial earlier this year.
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He appeared emotionless as a judge handed him a sentence that, even taking account of his time on remand, will see him in jail until at least his 49th birthday. Demi Walsh, the mother of Fletcher’s child, and Nathan Finnegan, Fletcher’s best friend, were each imprisoned for their attempts to help him evade justice.
Fletcher’s trial, which ended in July, heard previously how Fletcher murdered Stenson after a disagreement at a house party was escalated by Fletcher.
Richard Pratt KC, prosecuting, told jurors Mr Stenson’s murder occurred minutes after the fight broke out between him and Fletcher. Mr Pratt said the atmosphere at the party Fletcher and Mr Stenson were attending was good until a disagreement between them over whether Fletcher had been trying to flirt with Mr Stenson’s partner, Samantha Rosser.
The court heard Mr Stenson punched Fletcher and then the two started to scuffle before agreeing to go outside to finish the fight. Mr Pratt said there was no indication to Mr Stenson or anyone else that the fight would involve knives but that Fletcher decided to run and grab a kitchen knife from inside the house before stabbing Mr Stenson with it.
He told jurors during his closing speech: “What Liam Fletcher and perhaps others expected to find outside was no more nor less than a fist fight between two individuals but no doubt in the heat of the moment and, we suggest, enraged by Paul Stenson’s attack on him in the kitchen, Adam Fletcher took things to a wholly different and unexpected level.”
The stab wound Fletcher inflicted went straight through Mr Stenson’s heart and punctured one of his lungs. He died at the side of the road as Ms Rosser and his friends tried desperately to save his life.
After the murder, Fletcher fled. Over the next few days, before Fletcher’s arrest on December 23, both Walsh and Finnegan took steps to help him evade police. While Finnegan harboured Fletcher in his house for just under a day before his arrest, Walsh told lies to police, including one which implicated one of Mr Stenson’s friends as his killer.
Jurors at their trial saw through their lies and found each of them guilty.
Today, Mr Pratt read one statement from Mr Stenson’s mother and another written on behalf of his partner Samantha Rosser in which both explained how their lives had been devastated by his loss.
Heather Rosser, Samantha’s sister, wrote in her statement to the court of how Fletcher’s actions had destroyed her family. She said her sister had been transformed by the death of her childhood sweetheart while her and Mr Stenson’s son and daughter now face growing up without their father.
Mr Stenson’s mother described her son, the youngest of her three boys, as kind and intelligent - and a model father to his own two children. She added that he was highly skilled in his job as a tree surgeon and was also a keen musician.
She said the family had been robbed of many years of celebrations with Mr Stenson and said his birthday, Christmas and Father’s Day would now be marked by the grief of losing him.
Lawyers for Fletcher, as well as Finnegan and Walsh, all said each regretted deeply what they had done - though Judge Brian Cummings KC said the fact that they forced a trial flew in the face of those claims.
Judge Cummings said he accepted Fletcher had not had the specific intention of killing Mr Stenson when he stabbed him but said that trying to knife him in the chest was so clearly dangerous that that fact made little difference.
He said Mr Stenson’s family were the ones who would now have to live with the consequences of Fletcher’s actions, saying his death had been “continues to be quite devastating for his family and many friends”.
Fletcher was jailed for life with a minimum of 22 years in prison. Walsh was jailed for 18 months and Finnegan was jailed for 14 months.
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