Kyle Clifford should have been forced into the dock

There are few crimes as heinous as those committed by Kyle Clifford. The 26-year old former soldier raped and murdered his ex-girlfriend Louise Hunt, 25, killed her sister Hannah, 28, and fatally stabbed their mother, Carol, 61 during a four-hour attack at the Hunt family home last July.

Clifford will die in prison. But he refused to leave his cell to hear his whole-life sentence handed down at Cambridge Crown Court. As a result, Clifford was not present to listen to the devastatingly emotional victim witness statement, in which John Hunt – father and husband of the victims – said that he could hear the “screams of hell” awaiting the killer as retribution for what he had done.

If Clifford had been there, perhaps Hunt might have had some sense of justice. As other relatives of the victims wept, he told the court: “I so wish to deliver these words to Kyle and I’ll continue to do so as if I was doing that”.