Husband murdered wife's RAF lover
BBC Website
www.bbc.co.uk
18th April 2008
A jilted husband has been jailed for life for murder after following his wife to England to kill her RAF lover, Stephen Keen a 54-year-old RAF Flight Lieutenant, based at Lyneham in Wiltshire.

Francesco Matta, from Sardinia, travelled to Devon where his wife Susan was living with a former sweetheart whom she met through Friends Reunited. Matta then stabbed his rival, Flt Lt Stephen Keen, 54, four times in the neck in front of Mrs Matta. The 56-year-old will serve at least 13 years and six months for the murder in Tiverton in July 2006.

Mr Keen and Mrs Matta had got back together 30 years after their teenage romance ended, Exeter Crown Court heard. Matta travelled to the UK and turned up at the Tiverton home which his wife and Mr Keen had moved into a few days before.

'Slaughter chamber'
He then stabbed Mr Keen four times in the neck and throat in front of Mrs Matta. Mr Keen, who suffered over a dozen defence wounds to his hands, bled to death in the arms of Mrs Matta. She told the court the room looked like a "slaughter chamber" after the killing. Mr Keen had been her first boyfriend when she was a 14-year-old grammar school girl and he was a 17-year-old sixth former. They split up and lost contact two years later.

Their love blossomed again after they met through the Friends Reunited website and Susan ditched Matta while Mr Keen left his wife Doreen after 33 years of marriage. The couple agreed to live together without even meeting and they returned to live in Tiverton where they had been at school together in the late 1960s.

Former Savoy Hotel chef Matta assembled a killing kit during his journey across Europe. He bought a four-inch knife, pickaxe handle, dark clothes and hat, tape, rope and a can of petrol before lying in wait in a van outside the home where Mr Keen and Mrs Matta had lived together for just eight days. He went to the door and was invited in but stabbed Mr Keen to death when he was asked to leave.

He had just told Mr Keen: "You are supposed to be an officer and a gentleman but you have broken up two marriages." As he stabbed Mr Keen, he told Susan: "My life is over. Now you will suffer as I am suffering." Matta, who was working as a postman in Sardinia at the time of the killing, denied murder but was convicted after a retrial. He had admitted manslaughter, claiming he acted by reason of diminished responsibility due to depression.

But prosecutor Martin Meeke QC said when police arrived a calm Matta told them: "I came here to kill the man. I have done what I needed to do. I have done my job." He also said to the police it was an "honour killing" and "that is what I am, an executioner".

Mr Justice Jackson told Matta: "I am satisfied when you attacked Stephen Keen it was your intention to kill him." He said it was an "aggravating feature" that he planned to kill Stephen Keen before he left Sardinia and "there is ample evidence that was your plan".

The victim's wife, Doreen Keen, said in a statement after the case that she and her family were "devastated by the tragic death of a much loved husband, son, brother and uncle". She said the family felt there was "no justification for such an appalling crime".

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