Love cheat killed wife with a mallet when she told him she was pregnant

Andre Genestin, 48, hit his wife Catherine's head with a mallet when she revealed his "birthday surprise", following a row over his plans to ask his mistress to move in with them.

He stored her body first in an understairs cupboard for a fortnight and then in a box in the back garden of their semidetached house in Brighton.

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He spun a web of lies to explain her disappearance but police eventually found the tarpaulin-wrapped corpse after the couple's young daughter told teachers she had had a nightmare about her mother's body falling out of a cupboard.

Yesterday a jury at Lewes Crown Court took less than two hours to convict karate-fanatic Genestin of murder.

Russian-born Mrs Genestin, 38, met her husband, a former teacher from a wealthy French family, after putting a lonely hearts advert in a magazine.

They married in 1997 and moved to Britain, where Mrs Genestin worked as a gym receptionist.

On the day of her death she had got a job as a classroom assistant.

Although her husband had occasional work as a civil servant, he could not hold down a regular job and instead became a benefit fraudster.

He also began an affair with a Ukrainian girl he had met via the internet.

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When his wife confronted him, he urged her to consider allowing the girl to move in with them, saying she was "really thin, like a little bird, and wouldn't eat much".

On Friday May 11 last year, the couple had a blazing row about the proposal, at the end of which Mrs Genestin apparently said she was pregnant with the couple's second child.

However, a post-mortem examination later revealed that she was not in fact pregnant.

Genestin told the court during his testimony: "I was just in front of her. I felt the hammer at my feet... the next thing I knew, I killed her."

Genestin had denied murder but admitted manslaughter by reason of provocation.

He will be sentenced today.

His daughter, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is in the care of social services.