Man jailed for life for killing his two sons

A former soldier who stabbed his two young sons to death with a screwdriver in a frenzied attack minutes after his wife told him she was ending their marriage was jailed for life yesterday.

Steven Wilson, 44, was found guilty at Birmingham Crown Court of murdering Brad, seven, and Brett, eight, in a dark corner of Hill Top golf course near Handsworth on 6 February last year.

He had also attacked his wife, but she had escaped from his car. After the murders, he rang her on her mobile phone and said: "I've killed the kids and I'm going to kill myself." He had later thrust the screwdriver into his own chest.

During the 13-day trial Wilson, from Great Barr, Birmingham, had claimed that his sons had been killed by Albanian gangsters because his wife had stolen money and cocaine from a brothel where she was working. But the jury took less than an hour to convict him unanimously of two counts of murder and of causing actual bodily harm to his wife.

Sentencing Wilson to two life terms, Mr Justice Hughes told him: "You took those boys' lives to revenge yourself on your wife. They were seven and eight and the manner in which you killed them was brutal ... Anybody who heard you give evidence could believe no more than an occasional word."