41-year-old Mark Findlay of Birmingham stabbed his estranged wife Helen, 36, to death before jumping in front of a train leaving his two young children orphaned, reports The Mail, London.
Mark murdered his wife with a hammer and a knife at their home and then walked to the local train station and killed himself. Five days before her death, Helen had called the police after glue was squeezed into her car doors and front door locks.
Helen had then suspected her estranged husband for this sabotage, but she did not feel threatened and did not want to take any further action.
Days later, she was struck with a hammer and stabbed 11 times with a 5in kitchen knife, an inquest into their deaths heard on Tuesday.
Findlay then drew the curtains, locked the house and walked 200 yards to the station before jumping in front of a 70mph train.
Relatives told last night how Findlay also burned a box of his wife's clothes days after the pair decided to split up at Christmas last year.
But it was his wife's relationship with a new man, Lee Carter, 28, that is said to have pushed Findlay over the edge, even though his family revealed he was unfaithful to his wife 18 months earlier.
Helen Findlay had met Lee Carter two months before her death through her new job as an insurance adviser after winding down her role as joint company director in the internet business she ran with Findlay from their £300,000 semi-detached home.
Neighbours told how Lee Carter had stayed overnight at Helen's new rented home, three miles from the family home which she left in mid-January this year.
Findlay was aware of the relationship and had been struggling to accept that his marriage was at an end - despite his own infidelity. His father Roy told the inquest at Birmingham Coroner's Court that his son fell apart when he realised he had lost Mrs Findlay for good.
He said: 'Mark wasn't coping very well with the split-up. Helen was his whole life and he just couldn't live without her.'
On the morning of February 17, Findlay is said to have contacted his parents in Leicester and asked them to look after the children Joshua, 13, and Holly, six, for the day because he had work to do.
According to Helen's sister Wendy Hoyland, Findlay said his wife was coming over to do the books for their business, which sold trading cards based on the video game Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, originally a Japanese comic and cartoon. Once at the house, she was attacked, Birmingham Coroner's Court heard.
One stab wound went right through her arm and another pierced her lung and the artery leading to her heart. A post-mortem examination found that she died of multiple stab wounds.
When police went to the house to inform Helen of her husband's death, she was discovered face-down in a star shape in the living room.
The knife, hammer, a train timetable and scrawled letters from Findlay to his family were arranged on the kitchen table, the inquest heard.
Mrs Hoyland said that her sister tried to forgive her husband after he had an affair in 2007, but 'gradually fell out of love with him'.
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