Two jailed for life over woman’s stabbing death

Agencies/LondonA man has been jailed for a minimum of 32 years for stabbing to death a mother-of-five as she tended her horses in a New Forest field after he was recruited to stop her making an accusation about a sexual assault.Supermarket worker Pennie Davis, 47, was found dead by her husband on September 2 in a field at Leygreen Farm in Beaulieu, Hampshire.Justin Robertson, 36, was found guilty of murder following a six-week trial at Winchester Crown Court.He was given a life sentence and will serve a minimum of 32 years before he is considered for release.Jurors heard that Robertson agreed to kill Davis for Benjamin Carr, 22, the son of Pennie’s ex-lover, to stop her telling police that he had allegedly sexually assaulted someone when he was 14.Carr, of Edward Road, Southampton, was found guilty of conspiracy to murder and was handed a life sentence. He will serve a minimum of 30 years in custody.Co-defendant Samantha Maclean, 28, of Beech Crescent, Hythe, was found not guilty of the same charge.Robertson’s girlfriend, Lian Doyle, 24, also of Beech Crescent, earlier pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice after she disposed of his shoes, it can now be reported. She will be sentenced today.Pennie, who had only recently married husband Peter Davis, was alone in a small paddock in a field tending her horses when she was fatally stabbed.The trial heard that Davis knew Pennie because she had been in a relationship with his father Timothy from about 2006 to 2012.Prosecutor Richard Smith QC said Benjamin Carr harboured a ‘’lasting hate and anger’’ towards Pennie  after she made a complaint to police about allegations of sexual assault against him when he was 14.Smith said police took no further action over the complaint and added that Carr ‘’strenuously and consistently’’ denied the allegations. But the accusations left Carr with a ‘’lasting sense of animosity, hatred, towards Pennie Davis’’ which, according to prosecutors, didn’t ‘’wear off’’.Smith said Pennie repeated the allegations against Carr in August last year after she found out that Timothy Carr was to marry his new partner, Alison Macintyre.Pennie sent Facebook messages to Macintyre, saying one of the alleged victims of Carr would be making a statement to police.She wrote in one message: ‘’Good luck, you will need it,’’ and in another: ‘’I can’t forgive him, I hate him and all his family.’’In passing sentence, justice Popplewell described the murder as a “contract killing”.He said that Robertson was a “career criminal” with a string of convictions for theft and burglaries. Carr persuaded him to kill Pennie with the offer of £1,500 and “by a perversion of the allegations” being made by the victim, he said.The judge explained: “Carr told Robertson that she was a paedophile, a nonce in Justin Robertson’s vocabulary, which Carr knew would push a button with Justin Robertson because he hated nonces with a passion. In their twisted minds, this was a justification for killing.”