Peter Nash found guilty of Great Waldingfield double murders

 Peter Nash, of Heath Estate, Great Waldingfield, had denied murdering his 43-year-old wife Jillu and autistic daughter, Louise between September 7 and 9 last year and a jury took just over two hours to convict him of both offences.

Nash, who has occasionally appeared via a prison video link during the trial, was present in court to hear the verdicts.

Peter Nash will be sentenced next week. (Image: Suffolk Constabulary)

Members of Mrs Nash’s family and friends, some who had travelled from India for the trial,  hugged each other in the public gallery and wiped away tears as the verdicts were announced.

Nash, who now walks with a frame as a result of self-inflicted stab wounds inflicted shortly after the killings, was allowed to remain seated in the dock and didn’t show any emotion as the guilty verdicts were returned. 

Mr Justice Murray described the case as being one of “exceptional seriousness“ and offered Nash, who represented himself during the trial, the opportunity to be represented at the sentencing hearing but he declined.

Mr Justice Murray adjourned sentence until Wednesday ( May 17) and directed that Nash should remain in custody.

During Nash’s three week trial, the court heard that the body of his wife was found under a quilt on the living room floor. 

She had been asphyxiated and appeared to have had a T-shirt stuffed in her mouth while Louise died from a stab wound to her abdomen.

The court has heard that Mrs Nash had been having an affair for eight months with a man she worked with at Homebase in Sudbury and had been preparing to leave Nash and set up home with her lover.

Mrs Nash had secretly filmed a number of videos of conversations between her and her husband which David Josse KC, prosecuting said showed the “rancorous and unpleasant” side of their marriage which appeared to have irretrievably broken down.

Police went to the couple’s home on Heath Estate, Great Waldingfield on September 8 after Mrs Nash failed to turn up for work and Louise didn’t go to school.

Police officers forced their way into the family home but were initially deterred by the smell of gas and alerted the fire service.

When the emergency services entered the house they found Mrs Nash’s dead body on the floor in the living room under a quilt and Louise’s body was found under a sheet in a bedroom.

Nash was lying on the bed next to his daughter holding a knife and repeatedly stabbing himself. Police disarmed him after tazering him twice and he was taken to hospital with 22 stab wounds.

Giving evidence he claimed he had “lawfully” killed his wife because of her behaviour and killed his daughter because he was worried about what would happen to her.

Nash told the court that he’d confronted his wife on the night of her death in September last year about pictures of a man he’d found in their car and in her purse.

He said he had wanted her to tell the truth about the man in the pictures and when she started lying to him he had started strangling her.

“I’d say it lasted five to ten minutes until it got to the stage she passed out”.

He had then sat with her for about an hour and arranged her hair before checking her WhatsApp and Instagram accounts and then smashing her phone.

At that stage his daughter Louise, who was severely autistic, had woken up and he had covered Jillu’s body with a quilt before Louise went into the front room.

“While Louise was playing with her iPad I had to work out quickly what I was going to do next,” said Nash.

He decided to gas himself and his daughter and had unsuccessfully tried to do this by turning on the oven before attaching a hose to a gas fire.

Nash described waiting for his autistic daughter Louise to go to sleep before “ending her life” by stabbing her with a kitchen knife he’d taken from a block in the kitchen.

“She was undisturbed from her sleep. She didn’t move a muscle,” he said.

Nash said he had then decided to kill himself using the same knife he’d used to stab his daughter and had drunk Cognac to dull the pain.