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.
Image: Kyle Clifford. Pic: Hertfordshire Police
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”.
Image: Louise Hunt
Pic: Facebook
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.
Image: Carol Hunt pictured with her husband John Hunt.
Pic: Facebook
Image: Hannah Hunt. Pic: Facebook
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.”
Image: The recovered crossbow.
Pic: Hertfordshire Police
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.
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1:33
Footage shows Clifford fleeing the Hunt family home
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.
Image: The 10-inch butcher’s knife Clifford used was never found but police released an image of the packaging.
Pic: PA
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.
Another hint that tax rises are coming in this autumn’s budget has been given by a senior minister.
Speaking to Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander was asked if Sir Keir Starmer and the rest of the cabinet had discussed hiking taxes in the wake of the government’s failed welfare reforms, which were shot down by their own MPs.
Trevor Phillips asked specifically if tax rises were discussed among the cabinet last week – including on an away day on Friday.
Tax increases were not discussed “directly”, Ms Alexander said, but ministers were “cognisant” of the challenges facing them.
Asked what this means, Ms Alexander added: “I think your viewers would be surprised if we didn’t recognise that at the budget, the chancellor will need to look at the OBR forecast that is given to her and will make decisions in line with the fiscal rules that she has set out.
“We made a commitment in our manifesto not to be putting up taxes on people on modest incomes, working people. We have stuck to that.”
Ms Alexander said she wouldn’t comment directly on taxes and the budget at this point, adding: “So, the chancellor will set her budget. I’m not going to sit in a TV studio today and speculate on what the contents of that budget might be.
“When it comes to taxation, fairness is going to be our guiding principle.”
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Afterwards, shadow home secretary Chris Philp told Phillips: “That sounds to me like a barely disguised reference to tax rises coming in the autumn.”
He then went on to repeat the Conservative attack lines that Labour are “crashing the economy”.
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10:43
Chris Philp also criticsed the government’s migration deal with France
Mr Philp then attacked the prime minister as “weak” for being unable to get his welfare reforms through the Commons.
Discussions about potential tax rises have come to the fore after the government had to gut its welfare reforms.
Sir Keir had wanted to change Personal Independence Payments (PIP), but a large Labour rebellion forced him to axe the changes.
With the savings from these proposed changes – around £5bn – already worked into the government’s sums, they will now need to find the money somewhere else.
The general belief is that this will take the form of tax rises, rather than spending cuts, with more money needed for military spending commitments, as well as other areas of priority for the government, such as the NHS.
It is “shameful” that black boys growing up in London are “far more likely” to die than white boys, Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has told Sky News.
In a wide-ranging interview with Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, the commissioner saidthat relations with minority communities are “difficult for us”, while also speaking about the state of the justice system and the size of the police force.
Sir Mark, who came out of retirement to become head of the UK’s largest police force in 2022, said: “We can’t pretend otherwise that we’ve got a history between policing and black communities where policing has got a lot wrong.
“And we get a lot more right today, but we do still make mistakes. That’s not in doubt. I’m being as relentless in that as it can be.”
He said the “vast majority” of the force are “good people”.
However, he added: “But that legacy, combined with the tragedy that some of this crime falls most heavily in black communities, that creates a real problem because the legacy creates concern.”
Sir Mark, who also leads the UK’s counter-terrorism policing, said black boys growing up in London “are far more likely to be dead by the time they’re 18” than white boys.
“That’s, I think, shameful for the city,” he admitted.
“The challenge for us is, as we reach in to tackle those issues, that confrontation that comes from that reaching in, whether it’s stop and search on the streets or the sort of operations you seek.
“The danger is that’s landing in an environment with less trust.
“And that makes it even harder. But the people who win out of that [are] all of the criminals.”
Image: Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley
The commissioner added: “I’m so determined to find a way to get past this because if policing in black communities can find a way to confront these issues, together we can give black boys growing up in London equal life chances to white boys, which is not what we’re seeing at the moment.
“And it’s not simply about policing, is it?”
Sir Mark said: “I think black boys are several times more likely to be excluded from school, for example, than white boys.
“And there are multiple issues layered on top of each other that feed into disproportionality.”
‘We’re stretched, but there’s hope and determination’
Sir Mark said the Met is a “stretched service” but people who call 999 can expect an officer to attend.
“If you are in the middle of a crisis and something awful is happening and you dial 999, officers will get there really quickly,” Sir Mark said.
“I don’t pretend we’re not a stretched service.
“We are smaller than I think we ought to be, but I don’t want to give a sort of message of a lack of hope or a lack of determination.”
“I’ve seen the mayor and the home secretary fighting hard for police resourcing,” he added.
“It’s not what I’d want it to be, but it’s better than it might be without their efforts.”
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How police tracked and chased suspected phone thief
‘Close to broken’ justice system facing ‘awful’ delays
Sir Mark said the criminal justice system was “close to broken” and can be “frustrating” for police officers.
“The thing that is frustrating is that the system – and no system can be perfect – but when the system hasn’t managed to turn that person’s life around and get them on the straight and narrow, and it just becomes a revolving door,” he said.
“When that happens, of course that’s frustrating for officers.
“So the more successful prisons and probation can be in terms of getting people onto a law-abiding life from the path they’re on, the better.
“But that is a real challenge. I mean, we’re talking just after Sir Brian Leveson put his report out about the close-to-broken criminal justice system.
“And it’s absolutely vital that those repairs and reforms that he’s talking about happen really quickly, because the system is now so stressed.”
Giving an example, the police commissioner went on: “We’ve got Snaresbrook [Crown Court] in London – it’s now got more than 100 cases listed for 2029.”
Sir Mark asked Trevor Phillips to imagine he had been the victim of a crime, saying: “We’ve caught the person, we’ve charged him, ‘great news, Mr Phillips, we’ve got him charged, they’re going to court’.
“And then a few weeks later, I see the trial’s listed for 2029. That doesn’t feel great, does it?”
Asked about the fact that suspects could still be on the streets for years before going to trial, Sir Mark conceded it’s “pretty awful”.
He added: “If it’s someone on bail, who might have stolen your phone or whatever, and they’re going in for a criminal court trial, that could be four years away. And that’s pretty unacceptable, isn’t it?”
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She pinned the primary blame for the Met’s culture on its past leadership and found stop and search and the use of force against black people was excessive.
At the time, Sir Mark, who had been commissioner for six months when the report was published, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic, which Baroness Casey insisted the Met deserved.
However, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who helped hire Sir Mark – and could fire him – made it clear the commissioner agreed with Baroness Casey’s verdict.
A few months after the report, Sir Mark launched a two-year £366m plan to overhaul the Met, including increased emphasis on neighbourhood policing to rebuild public trust and plans to recruit 500 more community support officers and an extra 565 people to work with teams investigating domestic violence, sexual offences and child sexual abuse and exploitation.
A leading NHS hospital has warned measles is on the rise among children in the UK, after treating 17 cases since June.
Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool said it is “concerned” about the increasing number of children and young people who are contracting the highly contagious virus.
It said the cases it has treated since June were for effects and complications of the disease, which, in rare cases, can be fatal if left untreated.
“We are concerned about the increasing number of children and young people who are contracting measles. Measles is a highly contagious viral illness which can cause children to be seriously unwell, requiring hospital treatment, and in rare cases, death,” the hospital said in a statement to Sky News.
In a separate open letter to parents and carers in Merseyside earlier this month, Alder Hey, along with the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) and directors of Public Health for Liverpool, Sefton and Knowsley, warned the increase in measles in the region could be down to fewer people getting vaccinated.
The letter read: “We are seeing more cases of measles in our children and young people because fewer people are having the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles and two other viruses called mumps and rubella.
“Children in hospital, who are very poorly for another reason, are at higher risk of catching the virus.”
What are the symptoms of measles?
The first symptoms of measles include:
• A high temperature
• A runny or blocked nose
• Sneezing
• A cough
• Red, sore or watery eyes
Cold-like symptoms are followed a few days later by a rash, which starts on the face and behind the ears, before it spreads.
The spots are usually raised and can join together to form blotchy patches which are not usually itchy.
Some people may get small spots in their mouth too.
What should you do if you think your child has measles?
Ask for an urgent GP appointment or call 111 if you think your child has measles.
If your child has been vaccinated, it is very unlikely they have measles.
You should not go to the doctor without calling ahead, as measles is very infectious.
If your child is diagnosed with measles by a doctor, make sure they avoid close contact with babies and anyone who is pregnant or has a weakened immune system.
Image: The skin of a patient after three days of measles infection
It comes after a Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) report released earlier this month determined that uptake of vaccines in the UK has stalled over the last decade and is, in many cases, declining.
It said none of the routine childhood vaccinations have met the 95% coverage target since 2021, putting youngsters at risk of measles, meningitis and whooping cough.
The MMR vaccine has been available through the NHS for years. Two doses gives lifelong protection against measles, mumps and rubella.
Image: Two doses of the MMR vaccine give lifelong protection against measles, mumps and rubella. Pic: iStock
According to the latest NHS data, Liverpool was one of the cities outside London with the lowest uptake of the MMR vaccination in 2023-2024.
By the time children were five years old, 86.5% had been give one dose, decreasing to 73.4% for a second dose.
The RCPCH report put the nationwide decline down to fears over vaccinations, as well as families having trouble booking appointments and a lack of continuous care in the NHS, with many seeing a different GP on each visit.
In the US, measles cases are at their highest in more than three decades.
Cases reached 1,288 on Wednesday this week, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, with 14 states battling active outbreaks.
The largest outbreak started five months ago in communities in West Texas, where vaccination uptake is low. Since then, three people have died – including two children in Texas and an adult in New Mexico – with dozens more in hospital.