Husband ‘rigged device in bid to cause fatal fire’

A CHEATING husband tried to murder his wife by rigging their home with a homemade fire-starting device while he spent the night with his mistress, a court heard yesterday.

Ian Price, 30, attached a heat gun to an electrical socket and set a timer to switch it on in the middle of the night, causing a fire he hoped would kill Joanne Price, Birmingham Crown Court was told.

The incendiary device did spark a fire in the spare room of their home in the affluent village of Willoughton, near Gainsborough, Lincolnshire.

However, Ms Price awoke in time to call the emergency services. Opening the case for the prosecution, Gordon Aspden told the jury Price, who was in debt, stood to gain more than £190,000 (€202,900) in insurance policy and pension payouts from his wife’s death.

Had his “pre-meditated and well-planned” attempt to kill her on November 15, 2007, worked, it would also have “freed him from the double life he had been living for several months”, Aspden said. Price had also left a blow torch and gas cylinder near the heat gun “for good measure”, he said.

Price, of Vicarage Road, Willoughton, denies attempted murder. The court was told Price previously tried to poison his wife, who was trying for a baby, by replacing the contents of her iron capsules with a nicotine mixture. Ms Price discovered the tub of tablets and questioned him, but he told her he had planned to take them himself, the court heard.

The trial continues today.