A former soldier has been found guilty of raping his ex-girlfriend during a four-hour attack in which he killed her, her mother and her sister.

Warning: This article contains distressing details.

Kyle Clifford, 26, previously admitted murdering BBC racing commentator John Hunt’s wife Carol Hunt, 61, and their daughters Louise, 25, and Hannah, 28.

He also pleaded guilty to false imprisonment of Louise, who was tied and gagged with duct tape, and possession of the crossbow used to kill her and her sister, and the 10-inch butcher’s knife he stabbed their mother to death with.

Prosecutors said he raped Louise in an “act of spite” during the attack in the Hunt family home in Bushey, Hertfordshire, on 9 July last year after she broke up with him 13 days earlier.

Clifford, who refused to attend the four-day trial at Cambridge Crown Court, claimed DNA evidence found on her body was from a consensual sexual encounter 16 days before the attack.

But he was found guilty by a jury after the court heard his explanation was “completely untenable”.

There was applause from the public gallery and cries of “yes!”, with one woman pumping her fists and another woman crying as the guilty verdict was heard.

The court was told Clifford began planning the murders after Louise, who told a friend he had a “nasty temper”, ended their 18-month relationship in a message on 26 June.

Judge pays tribute to family of the victims

Mr Justice Joel Bennathan said he will sentence Clifford on Tuesday for his “dreadful” and “almost unspeakable” crimes.

The judge paid tribute to the family of the deceased, adding: “They conducted themselves with huge dignity and restraint and I pay tribute to them.”

Detective Chief Inspector Nick Gardner said Clifford’s failure to attend his trial was an “absolute act of cowardice”.

He pointed out that the trial had been held in Cambridge to meet Clifford’s accessibility needs – he required a wheelchair after he shot himself with the crossbow.

“He has put the family through the ordeal of the trial, he has created everything that’s happened over this past week and failing to show his face is completely cowardly,” he added.

Clifford ‘planned a terrible attack’

Louise’s friends and family, who had described Clifford as “odd”, and “disrespectful, rude and arrogant”, backed her decision to end the relationship, sparked by his behaviour at a friend’s wedding.

Prosecutor Alison Morgan KC said Clifford, who had hidden relationships with two other women from Louise, was “angered” that she rebuffed his attempts to get back together.

“The defendant planned a terrible attack on Louise Hunt and her family, enraged by her rejection of him,” she told jurors during the trial.

“That attack included an act of sexual violence, committed out of spite, when she was restrained and unable to escape him.”

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She said the murders were “carefully planned and executed”, with Clifford tricking his way inside the family home on the pretext of returning Louise’s belongings and delivering a “thank you” card to her parents after checking Mr Hunt was not home.

He carried out “a brutal knife attack” on Carol, then waited for his ex-girlfriend to return home from working at her dog grooming business in a pod in the garden, the court heard.

It was added that customers of Louise’s business were using the gate at the side of the house, “not realising what was happening” when Carol was attacked and killed.

Louise was held for hours before Clifford shot her with the crossbow moments before her sister Hannah, a beautician, came home from work.

Hannah is heard on audio at the Hunt family home saying: “Kyle, I swear to God,” after finding him inside the house, the court heard.

The prosecution said Hannah messaged her partner, Alex Klein, telling him to “call police… immediately. To mine. Now. Kyle here. Police now. He’s tying us up”.

Clifford’s own sister messaged him on the day of the attacks when she realised he had taken the crossbow, asking: “What are you playing at?”

A loud whooshing sound was caught on a doorbell camera as the weapon was fired, while Hannah could be heard to shout, “Oh my god”, as she found her mother and sister.

She was also shot but managed to call police, and emergency services found her collapsed in the doorway, but she died soon after.

Clifford, who served in the army from 2019 to 2022, shot himself in the chest with a crossbow as armed police found him in a cemetery the next day after a manhunt and is now paralysed from the chest downwards.

Violent misogyny promoted by the likes of Andrew Tate fuelled Clifford’s attack, prosecutors argued in court.

He also had been searching YouTube for the controversial influencer’s podcast the day before he carried out the four-hour attack, it was said in legal argument ahead of his trial.

It can only now be reported because the judge excluded the evidence from the trial, saying that it was of “limited relevance” and too prejudicial.

The violent misogyny promoted by the likes of Andrew Tate fuelled a former soldier’s rape of his ex-girlfriend and the murder of her along with her mother and sister, the prosecution argued in court.

Warning: This article contains distressing details.

Kyle Clifford, 26, had been searching YouTube for the 38-year-old controversial influencer’s podcast the day before he carried out the four-hour attack, it was said in legal argument ahead of his trial.

It can only now be reported because Judge Mr Justice Bennathan excluded the evidence from the trial, saying that it was of “limited relevance” and too prejudicial.

But he added that anyone who takes a close interest in Tate, a “poster boy for misogynists”, could also be seen as a misogynist.

Clifford tricked his way inside the family home in Bushey, Hertfordshire, on 9 July last year on the pretext of returning a bag of 25-year-old Louise Hunt’s clothes 13 days after she dumped him.

He made sure her father, the BBC and Sky Sports racing commentator John Hunt, wasn’t home before stabbing her mother Carol Hunt, 61, to death with a 10-inch butchering knife.

Clifford laid in wait for more than an hour until Louise returned from work at the dog grooming business she ran from a pod in the garden, tied her arms and ankles with duct tape, gagged her and raped her.

He held her captive for hours before shooting her through the chest with a crossbow, using the same weapon to kill her sister Hannah Hunt, a 28-year-old beauty therapist, when she returned home minutes later.

Clifford pleaded guilty to three counts of murder, false imprisonment, and two counts of possession of offensive weapons but denied raping Louise – claiming the DNA found on her body was from 16 days earlier.

He has now been found guilty of the charge by a jury at Cambridge Crown Court.

Interest in Andrew Tate

Clifford had been searching YouTube for Tate’s podcast the day before the murders and is believed to have watched up to 10 of the influencer’s videos.

One of Louise Hunt’s friends had previously asked why he was watching one of Tate’s videos involving drugged animals and he said: “Because it’s funny,” it was said during legal argument before the trial.

Prosecutors argued the “violent misogyny promoted by Tate” was the same kind that “fuelled both the murders” and the rape” committed by Clifford.

Alison Morgan KC said his interest in the “widely known misogynist” helped to explain why he became so “incandescent with rage” after she ended the relationship.

In throwing out the evidence, the judge said that there was likely to be ongoing reporting about Tate after he and his brother Tristan, 36, flew to the US from Romania on Thursday after travel restrictions imposed on the pair were lifted.

A criminal investigation has since been launched into the British-American pair – who are already subject to an ongoing probe into alleged people trafficking in Romania – in Florida.

They are also due to be extradited to the UK after that case to face separate accusations of rape and trafficking dating back to between 2012 and 2015.

The brothers deny any wrongdoing.

‘Misogynistic and sexualised’ comments

Clifford had recently been sacked from his job at a catering supply firm in Waltham Cross.

It also emerged in legal argument that he was said to have made “misogynistic and sexualised comments” about female colleagues in the workplace.

He hid two relationships with women he knew through work from Louise during their 18-month relationship, which started after they met on a dating website.

It can now be reported Clifford went on dating apps Hinge and Tinder moments after Louise ended their 18-month relationship in a message on 26 June last year.

Clifford then started planning his attack, buying a length of rope just two days later, and on 30 June he researched crossbows before searching for a pornographic video of a Wandsworth prison officer having sex with an inmate.

Brother serving life sentence for murder

He also discussed crossbows with his brother Bradley Clifford, who he would visit in prison every other week, where he is serving a life sentence for murdering a teenager in 2017.

Bradley Clifford drunkenly mowed down 19-year-old Jahshua Francis, who was riding a moped, and his pillion passenger Sobhan Khan, 18, after his “prized” red Mustang was damaged.

Police said Kyle Clifford had plenty of opportunities to back out of the 9 July attack but was “absolutely cold-blooded and calculated in his actions”.

In legal argument not before the jury, Ms Morgan said “highly sexualised violence played a part in what took place” and that Clifford was trying to “misogynistically control Louise Hunt for one more time”.

‘Sense of entitlement’

She described him as a man whose identity was based on “whether he has the right number of women and the admiration of women” and “doesn’t like to be told, ‘No,’ by women”.

Ms Morgan said his “sense of entitlement” and the “spite and the sleight” of being dumped fuelled the sexualised violence.

After the murders, CCTV footage shows Clifford calmly leaving the Hunt family home in the quiet cul-de-sac of Ashlyn Close carrying a backpack and holding the crossbow hidden under a blanket.

He drove to a cemetery near his home in Enfield, north London, where he shot himself in the chest with the weapon as armed police descended the next day following a manhunt.

A makeshift noose was found in a nearby tree, but police and prosecutors don’t believe he made a genuine attempt to end his life, although he was left paralysed from the chest down.

The trial was held in Cambridge to accommodate him as a wheelchair user, but he refused to attend.

‘Underwhelming individual’

His victims’ friends and family, including John Hunt – who has one surviving daughter Amy – sat in the public gallery to hear the harrowing details of the case.

Detective Chief Inspector Nick Gardner described Clifford, who served in the army from 2019 for around three years, as an “entirely underwhelming individual” with a failed military career who couldn’t hold down a job.

He worked as a private security guard for a few months in 2023, then was sacked from his job at Reynolds shortly before the murders.

Louise had told a friend Clifford had a “nasty temper”, while friends and family members described him as “odd” or “disrespectful, rude and arrogant”.

Clifford came to the attention of police in London in relation to alleged offences of possession of cannabis, assault without injury and theft when he was a juvenile between 2012 and 2013, but they didn’t result in charges or convictions.

Police say there were no obvious red flags that he would go on to commit such a crime.

Sharon Holland sits surrounded by fresh flowers as she scrolls through photos on her phone of her daughter, Chloe.

Warning: This article contains references to suicide and domestic abuse

Beautiful, poised, Chloe stares back at her from the screen. She was a fun, independent young women – until she wasn’t.

Caught up in an abusive relationship with a former partner, who her mother calls a “monster”, Chloe became a shadow of her former self.

Sharon never met him as Chloe kept the ongoing relationship a secret but she had suspicions when her daughter, who had moved out of home, retreated from her friends and family.

“As far as I knew, they’d split up in September 2022 and she was living happily in Southampton,” she says.

But Sharon began to suspect the relationship might be back on after she spotted her daughter liking some of her ex-boyfriend’s Facebook posts.

“I saw a few hearts on his pictures, and thought ‘here we go’. But she would always deny it and say she would never get back with him. Of course, she was lying to me.”

Increasingly isolated from her loved ones, Chloe’s only communication with Sharon was through text messages and the occasional phone call.

“She turned up at people’s houses with black eyes and made excuses for marks around her neck and everything else,” says Sharon. “No one told me.”

Chloe took her own life in February 2023.

Her family is not alone in their grief. There are now more victims of domestic abuse who take their own life, than those who are killed by their partners.

Between April 2022 to March 2023, there were 93 people who took their own lives following domestic abuse. A 29% rise compared to the previous year.

Assaulted with a dumbbell and handed a knife

Marc Masterton, Chloe’s boyfriend at the time, was routinely assaulting her, controlling her appearance, isolating her from friends and family, belittling her and encouraging her to self-harm.

On one occasion after he assaulted her with a dumbbell, Chloe threatened to take her own life.

In response, Masterton handed her a knife.

“She said on a few occasions, his eyes went from blue to black and it terrified her,” Sharon says.

The abuse was happening in plain sight – in hotels, hostels and on public transport. Chloe eventually chose to report the abuse to police. But two weeks later, she attempted to take her own life.

At the intensive care unit she was taken to before she died, Sharon didn’t leave her bedside. It was here she learnt from a police officer about Chloe’s testimony a fortnight before.

Chloe’s evidence

“They told me she’d done a video statement for over two hours and were investigating him,” Sharon says.

“I’ve watched it. She was crying for lots of it and was distraught. I was devastated and angry. He was telling her to take her life. He was giving her knives up against her neck and then saying, you do it.”

Her evidence led to the conviction of her abuser. Masterton admitted coercive and controlling behaviour and was jailed for three years, nine months.

Justice which, Sharon feels, fell well below her expectations.

“We needed to get over four years for him to go on this dangerous person’s list, so he could be monitored as high risk,” she adds.

Sharon is now calling for tougher sentences for those convicted of coercive control.

The current maximum sentence a perpetrator can get for the offence is five years, but Sharon points to countries like France where the maximum sentence is 10 years.

“No amount of years is going to bring her back… But he needed to get more than that.”

The overlooked victims of a growing crisis

It’s incredibly rare to get a criminal investigation in these cases, says Hazel Mercer from the national charity, Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse.

“Most of the families that come to us where there’s been a suicide as result of domestic abuse, the biggest issue for them is the lack of acknowledgement of what has happened to their loved one. Is there going to be any justice that says this domestic abuse was a crime against this person who’s now dead?

“They ask, is anything like that going to happen, and at the moment, nine times out of ten, the answer is no.”

Hazel works with families who feel a lack of “professional curiosity” by authorities means critical connections are often missed.

“When we have a homicide, resources are put into it, there is a real investigation… For a suicide, we seldom see that investigative desire or professional curiosity to look behind that suicide and why it happened.”

Fighting for change

The Crown Prosecution Service is investigating the link between suicide and domestic abuse more closely.

Efforts are being made to educate police and prosecutors on coercive control’s deadly trajectory after the high-profile death of mother Kiena Dawes, who was abused before she died by suicide on 22 July 2022.

Sky News has learnt the CPS is actively assessing similar cases, but Chief Crown Prosecutor Kate Brown says “it isn’t straightforward”.

“Invariably because of the nature of coercive and controlling behaviour, a lot of that offending happens in private. So without the victim, that’s quite difficult,” she says.

They are working with police to unpick the detail of the abuse a victim suffered in the lead up to their death. Collating evidence from family, friends or even doctors if the victim’s medical records show there’s been a history of physical violence.

The Ministry of Justice told Sky News: “This government is committed to halving violence against women and girls. The independent sentencing review is looking at sentences for offences primarily committed against them.

“Victims of controlling and coercive behaviour will also now be better protected through a new law that ensures more abusers are subject to joined-up management by police and probation.”

For Sharon, her campaign is a way of honouring her daughter’s memory. “I won’t stop till I get justice for Chloe,” she says.

Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK