Vigilantes get life for murder of innocent dad

VIGILANTE GANG WHO MURDERED INNOCENT DAD ALL GET LIFE

- NEAL KEELING LYNDA ROUGHLEY

IT was an act of bloodthirsty revenge. Christopher Hughes was stabbed 90 times after he was snatched off a street and bundled into the boot of an Audi.

But the gang of vigilantes who kidnapped him had made a colossal mistake.

His killers had wrongly believed the Wigan dad had raped a teenage girl at knifepoint. His desperate protests of innocence did not save him. The gang took the law into their own hands.

The attack was merciless. He had knife wounds to his head, neck, body and limbs, with the vast majority inflicted while he was still alive.

The 37-year-old's body was found by a dog walker near a motorway in Skelmersdale days later, on February 22. It had remained undiscovered for four days.

The eight murderers have now been locked up for hacking the dad to death in the horrific gang attack.

A wrong-headed plot which ended in appalling violence began on the evening before Christopher's murder, when the attackers wrongly believed he had committed a sexual offence. However, DNA evidence submitted in that investigation did not match Christopher's.

The gang-who all knew each other or were related - chose to deliver their own 'justice. They searched the Wigan area for hours on the evening of Thursday, February 17, 2022, eventually turning up at Christopher's home and storming in.