Chef who left wife's body in bin jailed

A chef was given a life sentence with a minimum of 20 years yesterday for killing his wife with a griddle pan and hiding her body in a freezer for three years.

Peter Wallner thought wife Melanie stood in the way of his womanising.

So he battered her with the cast-iron pan as she slept at their home in Surrey in August 2006, the Old Bailey heard. Her body was later found in a wheelie bin.

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Judge Stephen Kramer told Wallner: "Your acts have rightly been described as despicable and appalling.

"You doubtless thought the body would be loaded into a dustcart and compacted so that what you had done would never be discovered."

Wallner showed no emotion as the jury of seven women and five men found him guilty of murder.

But just before he was sentenced, his counsel, Nicholas Griffiths QC, said he had been instructed by Wallner to apologise.

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He said: "My client has asked me to say he sincerely apologises to the family for what he recognises as an awful thing he did, and for the pain and hurt he caused."

Wallner had tried to persuade family and friends that his wife died from natural causes – even presenting them with an urn full of fake ashes from a barbecue.

He placed his wedding ring with "Melanie" inscribed on it into the urn before it was buried on her father's farm.

Immediately after the verdict, South African Petrus Van Der Merwe

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angrily hit out at Wallner for treating his daughter's body like "rubbish".

He said in a statement to the judge: "It haunts me every day to think that, while I was staying in Melanie's house after her supposed passing, she was right there in a freezer.

"That thought eats away at my soul every day of my life."

Mrs Wallner's mother, Jeanne Oosthuizen, wept as her statement was read. She said of her daughter: "It must be devastating for you to know this person, who you referred to as the love of your life, was instrumental in your death."

The court was told that Wallner placed the body in a freezer in the garden shed and dumped it in the wheelie bin when he left the country with new girlfriend Lilia Fenech.

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But dustmen refused to take the bin from in front of the house in Hamilton Avenue, Cobham, because it was too heavy. The landlord saw an ankle when he looked inside.

Wallner, 34, was arrested after he voluntarily returned from Malta last June, following an international media alert.

He claimed he had "lost the plot" after Mrs Wallner, 30, hit him with a rolling pin and confronted him about a text message from another woman.

He said he "acted like a scumbag" in trying to persuade her family and friends that she died from natural causes.

But the jury agreed with the prosecution which said he killed Mrs Wallner in cold blood as she slept with a mask over her eyes.

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