Hayley Weatherall, her boyfriend and his daughter tried to kill Raymond Weatherall

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A woman, her boyfriend and his daughter have been jailed for life over a plot to murder the woman’s terminally ill husband.

Raymond Weatherall survived being shot in the face, jurors at Maidstone crown court heard. His wife, Hayley Weatherall, also planned to kill him using sleeping tablets and insulin.

Hayley Weatherall wept as she was handed a minimum sentence of 15 years on Tuesday for conspiracy to murder. Her boyfriend, Glenn Pollard, will serve a minimum of 17 years in prison; his daughter, Heather Pollard, was jailed for at least 15 years. All three denied conspiracy to murder.

The judge, Adele Williams, said: “This was cruelty of a high degree. Cold, calculated and chilling cruelty. You conspired to murder a man because you believed he stood in your way.

“That man was your husband, Hayley Weatherall; your best friend of over 20 years, Glenn Pollard; and ‘uncle Ray’, your father’s best friend and a man who you had known all your life, Heather Pollard.”

Williams said the motive for the plot was the pursuit of an affair between Weatherall, from Ash in Kent, and Pollard, of West Stourmouth, also in Kent. There were “three settled, determined and sophisticated” attempts to murder Raymond Weatherall, in which Pollard was the “prime mover”, she said.

The first attempt, Williams said, was when Heather Pollard went to shoot the victim in Rainham on 20 November 2017, under instruction from her father, but was unable to do so.

The judge said Heather Pollard, who was 19 at the time, was “desperate” for approval from her father and joined the conspiracy with “enthusiasm”.

The second attempt occurred nine days later, when Heather Pollard took her father’s rifle, again under his instruction, and waited for five hours until she could take a shot at Raymond Weatherall, who was at Sandwich marina.

The victim sustained a gunshot wound to the face, which narrowly missed his carotid artery and jugular vein.

The judge said Hayley Weatherall knew of the plot to shoot her husband and sent a text to Glenn Pollard from the hospital that read: “They didn’t do a very good job, he’s still here.”

Most of the bullet remains lodged in Raymond Weatherall’s left jaw because it is too difficult to remove.

Jurors were told the third attempt occurred in December 2017, when Heather Pollard researched insulin overdose on the internet. Raymond Weatherall has diabetes and injects insulin daily.

She texted her father on 4 December and explained that a method of killing the victim would be to “give him knockout pills and inject him where he injects himself”.

Hayley Weatherall told police Glenn Pollard had given her four sleeping pills to crush into her husband’s food. She said he had also given her £500 and told her to inject Raymond Weatherall with insulin when he was asleep, but she could not go through with it.

The judge said: “By the way in which each of you participated in this conspiracy, I believe that each of you will remain a serious danger to the public for a period which cannot be reliably estimated at the present time.

“I also conclude that such will be the revulsion and horror felt by right-thinking members of the public at this crime that only a sentence of imprisonment for life is justified.”