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This chilling CCTV shows a killer on the way to knife his estranged wife's new lover to death - before going to a chippy after the brutal murder.

War games enthusiast Wayne Smith was found guilty of murdering his estranged wife’s boyfriend, despite claiming he was playing with toy soldiers at the time.

Obsessed Smith, 38, stabbed Jon Britton to death when he turned up at his door wearing a hood and plunged a carving knife into his neck and chest.

Liverpool Crown Court heard how Smith hated Mr Britton because he blamed him for breaking up his marriage to Sarah Arbon, and feared he was developing a close relationship with their daughter.

However suspicion fell upon him immediately because he had made ranting threats in front of friends saying he would “bloody kill” Mr Britton in the months before his death, the Liverpool Echo reports.

But Smith had planned the murder carefully, setting up a false alibi through his best friend Steven Hatton, and disguising himself under layers of clothing.

Smith was jailed for life, and told he will serve a minimum of 28 years.

(Image: Merseyside Police)

The court heard that on the night of the murder, December 3 last year, Smith arranged with Hatton to go and play a game of Necromunda, a tabletop war game about space-age gangsters, at his house in Tranmere.

Paranoid Smith, who admitted spying on this wife with webcams and hacking her social media accounts, was seen leaving his home in Birkenhead on a CCTV camera he set up in his hallway wearing one particular set of clothes.

But when he got to Hatton’s he changed his outfit and then went out again, taking the train to Paton Close, West Kirby, where Mr Britton had bought a house to set up home with his new partner.

There he attacked him with a pound store knife he had bought especially for the occasion, in an attack so brutal the blade snapped off the handle.

(Image: Trinity Mirro)

But after his love rival was dead things began to go wrong for Smith, who discarded a hood and snood he had been wearing nearby. It was later recovered by a policeman walking his dog and found to have a one in a billion match for his DNA.

Back at Hatton’s house he confessed to what he had done while getting changed again, and asked his friend, who he met as a teenager at a wargaming club, to cover for him and hide various items of clothes.

Early the next day he was arrested and pointed to his CCTV footage showing him wearing different clothes to the murderer. He said he had been with Steven Hatton at the time.

Hatton, 23, backed up his story and wrote a witness statement. But when challenged by police he changed his mind and told them about Smith’s confession and how he seemed “not have a care” as he recounted the cold blooded murder.

He was seen on CCTV that night at a chip shop with his murderous friend looking, as prosecutor Stephen Riordan, QC, put it: “agitated and uncomfortable, in stark contrast to Wayne Smith”.

(Image: Merseyside Police)

CCTV from a train was recovered showing a masked man who for a split second pulled his hood down and revealed himself to be Smith.

Throughout his two-week trial computer expert Smith denied killing Mr Britton, a 43-year-old landscape gardener and musician, saying the snood was one he wore for a live action role playing game and could have been planted by someone else who had committed the murder and who was trying to throw the authorities off their scent.

But the jury of six men and six women rejected his story after more than 21 hours of deliberations and found him guilty of murder by a majority of 10 to two.

Richard Riley, senior crown prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service, Mersey-Cheshire, paid tribute to the efforts of detectives.

He said: “Smith thought he’d planned the perfect crime, roping his friend Hatton into his grisly plan to give him an alibi.

“But Merseyside Police unearthed the evidence that placed Smith very clearly at the scene and the Crown Prosecution Service thanks them for their help bringing this man to justice."