Mortgage broker ‘murdered wife, 46, at home to cash in on £450k life insurance after facing mountain of debt’
A MORTGAGE broker murdered his wife to cash in on her life insurance after spiralling into a mountain of debt, a court heard.
Stephen Hammond, 47, was set to gain £450,000 in the event of wife Sian’s death, it is said.
On October 30 last year, Hammond called 999 to report he had found the 46-year-old face down on the bed not breathing.
Sadly mum-of-two Sian could not be saved and was declared dead at the family home in Histon, Cambridgeshire.
Cambridge Crown Court was told a post mortem showed she had been “strangled and sustained other injuries”.
A paramedic who attended also concluded no CPR had been carried out, despite Hammond claiming he had done so, jurors heard.
At 11.56pm that night, a wrist fitness device showed a “spike” in Hammond’s heart rate that continued until 12.19am.
The data then stopped recording – suggesting the equipment had been taken off, jurors were told.
Prosecutor Christopher Paxton KC said this data “suggested the defendant was involved in some sustained physical activity at a time he claimed to be on the sofa watching television“.
Hammond later told police had sex with his wife, showered then went downstairs at about midnight while his wife stayed upstairs to sleep.
At the time of her death, he ran a business called Hammond Mortgage Services that was in about £300,000 in debt, jurors heard.
Around £200,000 of this was to Legal and General, with Hammond allegedly telling an agent to call him on the day of his wife’s death “suggesting something may have changed by then”.
When the agent called back on October 30, he told her his wife had died that morning and “even though they were divorcing she was the mother of his children”.
Hammond spoke to the agent again on November 3 and asked if he could pay the debt off quicker as he would be receiving life insurance and whether the firm could review the interest payments, it was said.
Mr Paxton added: “Sian Hammond had been dead barely a week and this was the defendant’s focus.”
Jurors were told Hammond paid his wife’s life insurance policy, also with Legal and General, up to date on October 26.
Mr Paxton said: “It’s the prosecution case that this defendant, her husband, is the killer.”
He continued: “Only he truly knows why he acted as he did when he took her life but you will hear that he faced a surging mountain of debt and financial pressures.
“How he told lies to fend off those seeking payment, including that he had cancer when he did not, and how in the days leading up to the killing of his wife he had paid one month’s arrears on their life insurance policies to bring them up to date.”
The court was told Hammond had “found himself in a pressure cooker of a situation” and saw Sian’s death as a “way out of the crisis of debt that he was in”.
Hammond denies murder. The trial continues.