How mum's betrayal led to brutal murder of her children's dad

This week Coleen Campbell began a prison sentence for the manslaughter of her husband Thomas, writes Andrew Bardsley

- Andrew Bardsley

MASCARA ran down Coleen Campbell's cheek as she heard her ex-husband's screams. She fought back tears, putting her hands over her ears as she listened to Thomas Campbell's last, terrifying moments.

Dressed all in black, with tied back, jet black hair, Coleen played the perfect grieving widow. The only thing that shattered this impression was the reinforced glass securing her inside the dock of a crown court.

In fact, beautician Coleen Campbell was not there as a grieving widow, praying justice would be done for her former spouse of 10 years. She was facing a possible life sentence accused of performing a key role in his brutal murder, one of the most shocking gangland killings in Greater Manchester's recent history.

This week she was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 13 years in jail.

She and John Belfield, now a fugitive, had formed an apparent alliance with a common goal seeking against revenge their former partners.

Coleen began speaking to Belfield after her 'toxic' marriage broke down, and after Belfield's ex dared to move on from him and start a new relationship with Thomas Campbell. While she was on the phone to Belfield, after 9pm on Saturday, July 25, last year, Thomas had turned up at their former marital home in Clayton, to visit their two children.

His daughter sat on his lap in his car, before he headed home to Tameside. It would be the last time she or Coleen would ever see him alive.

Burned, bound and brutalised while being tortured for two hours, his smart, new build three-storey home in Mossley became a bloody house of horrors. Blood splatter covered the carpets and the walls, a visual display of the ferocity of the crime after Thomas had been ambushed by three men at his front door.

He was attacked with weapons, punched, kicked, strangled and stamped on. In a final indignity, Thomas had boiling water poured over his buttocks.