Grimsby stabbing: Jobless loner who turned into crazed killer

He was bitter about the breakdown of a relationship with a woman 15 years his junior – she said he was too old – and angry he could not find work after being sacked from Baxter's soup factory in Grimsby because of his heavy drinking.

McMullan felt he had been "stitched up" by his former employers and received no severance pay after seven years' service. Increasingly, he feared he had been left on the "scrapheap" and believed immigrants were taking jobs he should have been entitled to.

In May 2008, his fragile state of mind suffered a shattering blow with the death of his only confidant, his former sister-in-law Miriam, a recovering alcoholic.

McMullan said the loss of Miriam made his anger and frustration "ten times worse." In fact, it became a barely concealed rage that would propel him on a descent into murder.

Although the jury rejected his claim of hearing murderous voices in his head, McMullan said his bizarre experience began when he was a pallbearer at Miriam's funeral.

He nearly collapsed and dropped the coffin when he felt something running down his back "like a hand." Thinking it was his brother, he turned round, but saw nothing and said it "freaked him out big style."

McMullan said he woke one morning after the funeral with a "buzzing" in his head that would not go away. Then he began hearing voices and told doctors they said "something like 'Kill someone, I'm better than them, kill them', yes, that's right."

But his varying descriptions of the auditory hallucinations led Dr Philip Joseph, the consultant forensic psychiatrist, to doubt he had really experienced them.

He said the voices ranged from being a single male voice he did not recognise, to his own voice, to "four or five" male voices. On other occasions they were a mixture of male and female voices, sometimes with North East accents.

McMullan, a small, slight and bespectacled figure, became a lethal threat to others when he started carrying a knife.

Within a month of the funeral he had shown how close he was to using it when he responded to a derogatory comment from a man in the street by pulling out the knife and telling him: "******** say that again and I'll have you."

He had become a very different man to the one who grew up in Newcastle, describing himself in his youth as "champion" and "happy-go-lucky."

He moved to Grimsby after the break-up of his marriage 14 years ago. He said his 20-year marriage was "all right" but confessed to a string of affairs and said he and his wife drifted apart because he worked away.

At the age of 42 he began a new relationship with a woman in Grimsby called Louise, then 27. But after five years she found the age gap too much and ended it.

McMullan, who described it as a "brilliant relationship," never quite recovered and stayed in the town solely in the hope she would have him back, but she would never agree, increasing his sense of isolation.

Dr Joseph said: "He told me he was stuck living in Grimsby in a shared house but still felt alone when living with other people."

Feigning concern he might act on the voices, McMullan went into Grimsby police station on June 2, 2008, and told officers he was carrying a knife and that voices were telling him to kill.

It was the first of three similar visits over a two-month period.

On June 7 last year, his anger boiled over when he saw two "coffee-coloured" men in safety boots and protective clothing, and told them: "Go back to your own ******** country."

But worse was to come and his warped sense of injustice was about to have the most terrible consequences – McMullan had decided that somebody was going to pay for his own miserable existence.

That afternoon, just before 4pm, he was seen walking along Victoria Street, a few yards behind heavily pregnant Claire Wilson, 21, on her way to work.

Without warning, as they came level with a car at traffic lights, McMullan raised a kitchen knife above his head and plunged it down into her back with such force it was buried to the hilt.

Miss Wilson staggered forwards, held her arms out and screamed before collapsing on the pavement. She died in hospital and her unborn baby – whom she and her partner Adam Kennard had already called April – died in her womb.