Daily Mail
March 21, 2014
A jealous lover who murdered his girlfriend over her affair with a man she met on a dating site for Oxbridge graduates was jailed for life today.
Jonathan Tebbs, 46, stabbed dedicated town hall chief Kate Dixon 29 times with a Swiss Army knife before reading an Oscar Wilde poem about a man who kills his wife.
He stripped her clothes off and calmly carried her into the shower where he washed the blood from her lifeless body at a flat in Streatham, south London.
The killer attempted to scrub the murder scene clean and then searched on the internet for Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which includes the verse: ‘Yet each man kills the thing he loves … The coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with the sword.’
Tebbs became enraged after learning Ms Dixon, 41, was in a relationship with a man she met on Blue Match – an upper crust dating website for Oxbridge graduates.
The controlling killer became increasingly possessive after believing that he and Ms Dixon were meant to be together, Southwark Crown Court heard.
He flew into a rage after confronting the council figurehead about her relationship with Mark Baynes when he caught the pair on Skype together.
Today, a jury of seven women and five men took less than three hours to unanimously find Tebbs guilty of murder.
The killer, wearing a black three-piece suit, lavender shirt and blue tie, bowed his head as the verdict was announced while cries of ‘yes’ came from the public gallery packed with Kate’s close friends and family.
A statement prepared on behalf of the grieving family said: ‘Kate’s shocking death has deprived Kate of a life she enjoyed and richly deserved.
‘It has deprived Kate and Mark Baynes of the life that they were planning together and were looking forward too very much.
‘It has deprived the council of a manager who contributed much to services she was involved in and it has deprived her close colleagues and friends of Kate’s company.’
Sacha Wass QC, defending, said Tebbs ‘lost his temper’, adding: ‘He clearly loved her, he clearly felt unable to cope without her and because of his personality traits, it was much more difficult for him to intellectualise, which he clearly tried to do but clearly failed to do, because of his actions on that night.’
Ms Dixon, who was joint head of strategy, equality and performance at Islington Council, started a tumultuous 12-year romance with Tebbs after meeting him on a Tube train.
But she became disillusioned and on numerous occasions tried to end the relationship despite being ‘fearful’ of Tebbs and ‘frightened of what he was capable of’.
On the night of the killing, Ms Dixon finally plucked up the courage to end the relationship with Tebbs after he caught her Skyping Mr Baynes.
Tebbs, who taped his conversations with Ms Dixon, made his final ever recording of his girlfriend just shortly before he stabbed her to death.
Jurors were played the chilling two-and-a-half-hour recording which began after Tebbs had snatched Ms Dixon’s phone away from her, demanding to know more about her new romance.
Ms Dixon told Tebbs that she wanted to end their relationship but the jealous lover quickly interrupted and went on an hour-long unbroken rant, accusing her of cheating on him because of her difficult relationship with her father.
The court heard that Ms Dixon had undergone psychotherapy after meeting her biological father for the first time.