The grey haired gunman who tried to get away with murder

Shuffling into the witness box holding his back, and several stones lighter than at the time of his December arrest, Mike Reader presented himself as a harmless, elderly man during his eight-week trial at Northampton Crown Court.

The 70-year-old, who was today found guilty of the murder of his estranged wife Marion Price, was keen to show the jury that he wasn't physically capable of shooting defenceless Marion through the head in Earls Barton.

His long list of medical problems including three heart attacks, diabetes and a foot condition that had left him wheelchair-bound for months before Marion's killing were presented to the jury as proof that this man could not have been responsible for such a terrible crime. He told the court of a crippling back injury sustained during a fall from a banister four decades ago that he took a cocktail of daily painkillers for.

He was allowed to regularly pace the dock to allow him to exercise his back.

On several days the court had been unable to sit because Reader had been ill, and on one occasion he spent the night in hospital with a 'heart scare', only to discharge himself in the morning and ask to be brought to court - a request that was refused. At one point, a prison governor had to be phoned by Judge Adrienne Lucking to ensure that Reader had taken the correct medication before coming to court.

And yet Reader hadn't counted on a jury wondering how such a poorly man could build a treehouse for Marion's grandchildren, convert his bungalow loft to a liveable room, play snooker with his best pal and co-accused Stephen Welch every evening, run a ‘car sales’ business that left him with £120,000 in cash in his safe, and carry out a 'nut and bolt' restoration on an imported £28,000 Jaguar E-Type - all while suffering from such debilitating illnesses.

He even managed to play rounds of golf at Overstone with a member of Marion's family.

Born in Kettering in 1950, softly-spoken Reader told the jury from the witness box that he had left school at 15 with no formal qualifications and had moved from job to job before settling on a career in the motor trade. A marriage at 19 had resulted in two daughters, one of whom supported him in court throughout the trial, but ended in divorce just two years later.

After several long-term relationships, Reader had been on his own for 18 years before meeting Marion.

In an attempt to engage the jury, Reader told the court he had an interest in motorcycles in his youth.

"Were you a mod or a rocker?" asked his defence barrister William Harbage QC.

"I was a rocker, " he said, chuckling, and hoping the jury were laughing with him.

When asked about his technological ability, he rated it at 'zero'.

But this was a man who had met his wife on a dating website, had a four-camera CCTV system installed in his home and had stalked his wife's movements on a tracking device attached to her car.

He told the court his only experience of guns was from an air rifle he kept in his house to shoot rats that went into the shed where he kept food for his koi carp.

"It was good for shooting drain pipes and windows," he told the court, "but I never shot a rat."

Reader's defence team decided to outline all his previous convictions to the jury hoping that they would show the human side of a petty criminal, but not of a killer. Among them were a conviction for actual bodily harm in April 1970. Reader smiled as he told the court he'd punched a man at work during an argument over the last cream cake.

Convictions for handling stolen MOT documents followed, as well as a prison sentence for claiming unemployment benefit. He also touched on an offence in January 1996 where he was arrested in Lyon, France, for importing cannabis.

Reader met Marion online in 2012, going on their first date in June of that year at The Stag's Head in Earls Barton. After a whirlwind romance, they were married in September and she moved into his nondescript bungalow at Booth Rise in Northampton.

Marion's family had misgivings about Reader but her daughter Toni and son Gary decided, unfailingly, to support their mum, who told a colleague just a month after she got married that she believed she had made a big mistake and that Reader was 'not who she thought he was'.

Reader belittled Marion, making jokes at her expense, twice leaving her in London alone while he travelled back to Northampton.

Marion managed to leave Reader for good in 2017 and went to live with her mum.

But he visited her home, smashing her over the head with a mallet three times and leaving her with numerous head injuries. A jury cleared Reader of that crime in 2018.

During the trial, but not in front of the jury, Judge Lucking was asked to rule on whether that incident should be described as an 'attack,' or, as Reader's barrister described it, an 'alleged attack.' She ruled that it was fair to refer to it as an attack.

When the pair's divorce eventually ended up in court, Marion was so scared of her husband that she gave evidence from behind a screen in court, a fact the jury in the murder trial was not told.

On the night of his arrest, at 9.21pm on December 15, police came to his door in Booth Rise, Northampton, and told him he was being arrested on suspicion of murder earlier that day. He replied: "What? I haven't seen her."

He was eating a Magnum ice cream and watching snooker on his television - with the screen for his CCTV system clearly visible in the background.

Rather than asking what had happened to the woman he was still married to, Reader was more concerned with finding his dog's medication, and then his own medication.

Reader's arrogant attempts to charm the jury were ended abruptly under cross-examination, when his co-accused's barrister John Cammegh QC demolished his defence, piece by piece.

Exposing the numerous inconsistencies in his story, Mr Cammegh showed Reader to be a bare-faced liar.

He accused him of 'dreaming up a mystery man' overnight to explain why his own phone was in the vicinity of Marion's flat and indicated he thought he was running drugs.

The following day, prosecution barrister Mary Loram QC finished the job by picking further holes in Reader’s nonsensical pleas of blamelessness.

Despite his attempts at a BAFTA-winning performance in the witness box, the jury saw straight through Reader and today found him guilty of the calculated and cold-blooded crime against his innocent former wife.

You can read about Marion's life here.