EXCLUSIVEBy Dave GooderhamA CHEF who killed his wife with a club hammer as their three young children slept in their home has been granted leave to appeal against his conviction.

EXCLUSIVE

By Dave Gooderham

A CHEF who killed his wife with a club hammer as their three young children slept in their home has been granted leave to appeal against his conviction.

Colin Dorey was jailed for life after a jury was told his wife Christine had been hit around the head and face at least 10 times at the couple's Bury St Edmunds home in January 2002.

Dorey has now been granted leave to appeal on a “legal technicality” against his conviction and sentence and this will be heard by three judges sitting at the Court of Appeal in London on March 15.

The family of Christine Dorey declined to comment last night, but a spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service confirmed an appeal hearing had been granted on a legal issue.

Dorey, who was sentenced to life imprisonment following his trial at Ipswich Crown Court in August 2002, could get an early release from prison - two years after he first lodged plans to appeal.

The 45-year-old denied murder, but admitted a lesser charge of manslaughter. He was tried at Ipswich Crown Court later that year after prosecutors refused to accept this guilty plea.

During the eight-day hearing, the jury was told Dorey had rowed with his wife over her relationship with another man.

The 37-year-old was battered repeatedly around the head and face as she dozed on the sofa as her three children slept upstairs at the couple's Bedell Close home.

The jury heard Mrs Dorey had had an affair and a child with her lover a few years after she married Dorey. She then told her husband that getting back with him after the affair 11 years earlier had been a terrible mistake.

In the months leading up to his wife's death, Dorey had become suspicious she may have been having another affair with a man with whom she worked at Tesco.

Dorey said he could see everything he had worked for falling to bits and he had “flipped”.

He could remember getting a heavy club hammer that he had bought to demolish a playhouse and going into the lounge where his wife was sleeping on the sofa.

Dorey told the court his mind had then gone blank, adding: “I must have hit her, but I don't really remember.”

The former chef at Trinity College, Cambridge, was convicted of murder on a majority verdict.

dave.gooderham@eadt.co.uk