KEY POINTS:
The former policeman who arrested Rainbow Warrior bombers Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur in 1985, was jailed today for life for murdering his wife.
David McSweeney faces a minimum non-parole period of 15 years after he admitted murdering his wife Suzanne Marie McSweeney.
He stabbed her 30 times at their failing textile business in Silverdale north of Auckland earlier this year.
He was also jailed for nine months for assaulting his mother in law Doreen Radford.
During the sentencing Justice Geoffrey Venning heard McSweeney, 55, was emotionally very brittle and lived with the killing every moment of every day.
He was devoted to his wife and remained so, his lawyer Roger Chambers told the court.
However, outside the court after McSweeney was sentenced, two brothers of the dead woman said he was cold and calculating.
Alistair Grey said they did not accept his remorse -- "not for one moment.
"With his past he knows the ropes and he knows which alleyways to go down and which lines to follow," he said of the former United Kingdom and New Zealand policeman.
He said McSweeney had manipulated the judicial process.
Another brother of the dead woman, Peter Grey, said McSweeney was cold-hearted and shrewd and there was no doubt of that.
He was not a warm human being, said Peter Grey.
During the sentencing McSweeney sat in the dock and looked straight ahead until the judge began to talk about the details of the killing.
The judge said after his wife took out a protection order because of the violence, he went to their business Creative Textiles in Silverdale and attacked her.
"You stabbed her and killed her in what can only be described as a frenzied attack.
During the attack he stabbed her 30 times, severing her larynx, trachea and jugular vein. One stab wound was to her heart.
Mrs Radford heard her daughter screaming found McSweeney hunched over his victim.
He hit her and hurt her and dragged her to the lunch room before he went back to finish killing his wife.
Mrs Radford tried to call police but McSweeney had cut the telephone lines, the judge said.
After she died he walked around the shop for hours, before he tried to kill himself by cutting his throat and wrists and taking a large number of pills.
He was found by the couple's son Steven.
"Without his intervention you may not have survived."
The judge said the relationship was under severe stress when the business they bought in 2000 failed and led to the loss of their home.
Victim impact reports made harrowing reading, the judge said.
Mrs Radford was traumatised. Every time she thought of her daughter her last memory of her was of her screaming for help and of her blood.
Their son Steven had lost a mother and effectively a father because McSweeney would be an old man when he got out of prison and would be unable to give his son the support he undoubtedly needed, the judge said.
The killing was planned with a high level of brutality, the judge said.
- NZPA
