Arsonists target former home of woman jailed for setting up deadly ambush for ex
Arsonists launched an attack on the old home of a woman who helped kill her drug-dealing ex-husband.
Coleen Campbell was jailed this week for her role in the murder of her former partner Thomas – a cocaine dealer who played an ‘integral’ part in an organised crime gang.
Her old house on Bamford Street in Clayton, east Manchester, was targeted in the early hours of Thursday.
Firefighters were called to the home, where the Campbells used to live with their two children, and had to put the blaze out.
The property is believed to be empty now and no one was injured. No arrests have been made but the police have launched an investigation.
Bolton Crown Court convicted Campbell of manslaughter after the jury heard how she shared vital information about her former spouse’s whereabouts with his killers.
Mr Campbell was dragged around his home and viciously attacked for two hours, after three men ambushed him as he unlocked his front door on July 2 last year.
He was tabbed, punched, stamped on and even had boiling water poured on his buttocks.
His killers left him to die and his body was discovered with 61 separate injuries the next morning by neighbours.
Campbell, a mum of four, was acquitted of murder. One of the three attackers Reece Steven, 29, was found guilty of murder and jailed for life with a minimum term of 37 years.
Stephen Cleworth, 38, who was due to be at Mr Campbell’s home that night but did not attend because he was on a ‘bender’ at a swingers’ club, was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter. He was jailed for 12 years.
The trial heard Cleworth played a key role in the preparation of the ‘carefully planned, practised, ruthless, armed assault’. Prosecutors described the attack as an ‘extraordinary act of barbarism’.
The alleged mastermind of the attack, John Belfield, 28, remains on the run.
Coleen Campbell, Steven, and Cleworth were all found guilty of conspiring to rob Mr Campbell.
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