A chef who killed his wife with a cast-iron pan and hid her body in a freezer for three years was today jailed for life.
Peter Wallner murdered his wife Melanie, 30, because he thought she was standing in the way of his womanising. He bludgeoned her with a griddle pan while she slept in August 2006 and stored the body in a freezer in the garden shed.
When he left the country with his new girlfriend, he dumped his wife's body in a wheelie bin, where it was discovered in June last year in Cobham, Surrey.
A jury found Wallner, 34, guilty of murder at the Old Bailey today. Judge Stephen Kramer ordered him to serve a minimum of 20 years in prison.
"Your acts have rightly been described as despicable and appalling," said Kramer. "You doubtless thought the body would be loaded into a dustcart and compacted so that what you had done would never be discovered."
Wallner killed his wife as she slept with a mask over her eyes. He tried to cover up his crime by sending texts and using her credit card before claiming a week later that she died of a brain aneurysm.
Melanie Wallner was from South Africa and when her parents held a memorial service for her in Pretoria, Wallner flew over with an urn he said contained her ashes. The urn actually contained ashes of wood he had burnt on his barbecue.
Wallner placed his wedding ring inscribed "Melanie" into the urn and told those present at the interring of the ashes "he didn't believe in heaven, but he had heaven on Earth with Melanie".
Wallner, who met his wife at a hotel where they were working in 2001, had pleaded guilty to manslaughter but denied murder.
He admitted attempting to cover up Melanie Wallner's death but claimed he had attacked his wife after she hit him with a rolling pin and confronted him about a text message from another woman.
The prosecution described it as "a senseless killing motivated by the greed of this man to make way for a different woman in his life". The night after killing his wife, he slept with another woman in the same bed.
Melanie Wallner's body was discovered when binmen refused to take away the wheelie bin in which it had been dumped because it was too heavy. When the landlord looked inside he saw an ankle.
Wallner was arrested when he voluntarily returned from Malta in June last year after an international media alert.
He showed no emotion as the verdict was read out but just before he was sentenced, Wallner's counsel said he had been instructed by his client to apologise.
Melanie's father, Petrus Van Der Merwe, described his daughter as "the most amazing person. She had a very bubbly personality and was full of laughter". He said Peter Wallner had treated his daughter "like rubbish in a wheelie bin". "My heart and soul was ripped into a million pieces," he said.
Melanie Wallner's mother, Jeanne Oosthuizen, wept at the side of the court as her statement was read.
She said it would be "devastating" to her daughter "to know this person, who you referred to as 'the love of your life', was instrumental in your death".