Kyle Clifford murdered two of his three victims with a crossbow he ordered a week before the attacks.
Kyle Clifford murdered two of his three victims with a crossbow he ordered a week before the attacks.
Kyle Clifford was found guilty of murdering former partner Louise Hunt, her sister, and their mother.
Clifford, influenced by misogyny, also raped Hunt before the murders and attempted suicide.
He was sentenced after a trial at Cambridge Crown Court, where he refused to attend proceedings.
A former soldier watched videos of Andrew Tate before murdering his former partner alongside her sister and her mother, it can now be reported.
Kyle Clifford was “fuelled by misogyny” as he killed Louise Hunt, 25, her 28-year-old sister Hannah and their mother Carol, 61, in a knife and crossbow attack at their home in Bushey, Hertfordshire, on July 9 last year, a court was told.
The 26-year-old admitted their murders but denied raping Louise, his former partner, who had ended their relationship two weeks earlier because of his aggressive and “belittling” behaviour.
Clifford, who is paralysed from the chest down after shooting himself with the crossbow after the killings, was found guilty on Thursday of rape after a four-day trial at Cambridge Crown Court.
Louise (left), Carol (centre) and Hannah Hunt were killed by Kyle Clifford
Jurors took 45 minutes to unanimously find him guilty. He will be sentenced at the same court on Tuesday. There were cheers, applause and sobs in the public gallery as the verdict was read out.
Clifford refused to attend proceedings or give evidence but continued to insist through his lawyers that he was innocent.
John Hunt, the BBC racing correspondent, who is Louise and Hannah’s father, and Carol’s husband, attended every day of the trial and sat through the harrowing evidence in silence.
Clifford stabbed Hunt with a 25cm butcher’s knife before hiding her body and waiting for more than an hour for Louise to return from the back garden, where she was working in her dog grooming pod.
He then gagged, restrained and raped her before shooting her with the crossbow while she was next to her mother’s body. Hannah returned home seconds after Louise was killed, and Clifford shot her dead before fleeing.
After carrying out the murders, Clifford went on the run.
Packaging for the knife Clifford used to murder Carol Hunt
The following day, he was traced to the Lavender Hill Cemetery near his home in Enfield, north London, where he attempted to take his own life by shooting himself in the chest with the crossbow as officers moved in to arrest him.
Alison Morgan KC, prosecuting, said on Thursday that Clifford had killed Louise because he would “not allow” her to control the narrative after the break-up.
She said: “If he wanted Louise, he would have her. He would control her. He would rape her. He would murder her and members of her family. If he could not have Louise Hunt, no one else was going to, and he was going to take down her family with her”.
The court heard that Clifford had lain in wait in the Hunt family home for an hour after killing Carol.
Morgan continued: “He was lying in wait not because what he had planned for Louise was just an act of murder. He could have done that immediately. He was lying in wait to do something altogether different.
“When she came into the house, we know she must have been rapidly restrained and silenced.”
In a police interview, Clifford replied no comment and only became emotional when asked about his own suicide note, which officers described as “self-centred”.
Before the trial began, prosecutors wanted to highlight to the jury Clifford’s interest in social media influencer Tate as they argued that it was “revealing to his mindset and how he viewed women”.
However, Justice Joel Bennathan, the trial judge, ruled that it was not directly relevant and would be highly prejudicial as Tate was an alleged rapist and “almost a poster boy for misogynists”.
Kyle Clifford, left, and his older brother Bradley, who was jailed in 2018 at the age of 23 for deliberately chasing and mowing down an 18-year-old
He said: “The prosecution suggest the sort of violent misogyny promoted by Tate is the same type of motivation that, on their case, fuelled both the murders and the rape. The defence submit this material has too vague a link and it is far too prejudicial”.
Morgan KC, prosecuting, argued that Clifford’s interest in Tate was “highly pertinent” to why he raped Louise and carried out the murders.
Tate, 38, is a British-American former kickboxer who has millions of followers online.
He and his brother Tristan, 36, face charges in the UK of rape and human trafficking. They deny the allegations and earlier this week left Romania for the United States, where Florida’s Attorney-General has launched a criminal investigation into them.
Just 24 hours before his attack, Clifford had searched for a Tate podcast online. Morgan said that this was “revealing as to his mindset at that time as to how he views women”.
Detectives said they had found evidence that he had downloaded at least 10 videos of Tate. On one occasion, Louise and her friends were having a get-together and Clifford put a Tate video on the TV. In the clip, animals were being harmed. Clifford appeared to find it funny, although Louise and her friends did not.
Kyle Clifford was ‘fuelled by misogyny’ as he killed his ex-partner Louise Hunt, 25
In a statement, four British women who allege that Tate raped and coercively controlled them, said: “Hearing that Kyle Clifford watched videos of Andrew Tate in the lead-up to his murders of his ex-girlfriend, her mother and sister, is deeply upsetting to us, but sadly not surprising.
“This should be a wake-up call for all the social media companies who are continuing to platform Tate and his dangerous messages. These companies should take immediate steps to remove Andrew Tate from their platforms rather than continue to reap enormous profits from his hateful content.
“Clifford’s case should be a warning to world leaders and all those who belittle the seriousness of allowing incitement of violence against women online fester.”
Morgan said: “[Clifford] was someone who looks at the world from that viewport of gaining gratification, gaining his identity through whether he has the right number of women, the right admiration. He is highly critical of Louise that she doesn’t give him enough admiration.”
She said that the rape of Louise was “at the heart of all the offending” and that Clifford wanted to use “sex as a weapon”.
She added: “The spite and the slight that comes from him being mistreated, as he would see it, is what fuels the whole planning of these events, and we would submit that sexualised violence is a part of that”.
Detective Chief Inspector Nick Gardner, the lead investigator in the case, said that the murders were “not a crime of passion but a carefully planned assault”.
He said Clifford’s crimes were “truly unprecedented.”
“He carried out the killing of three innocent women with cold-blooded calculation and cruelty.”
Gardner said Clifford had been a troublesome student and did “everything but be expelled” at school. He was involved in minor violent incidents, and was accused of bullying.
Police said he was also arrested on two occasions for affray and possession of cannabis. After leaving secondary school, he had a series of jobs before joining the Army in 2019.
Clifford, who joined the Queen’s Dragoon Guards, struggled with the disciplined life and barely passed his basic training. Over the following months, he had a number of “internal issues” before leaving two years later.
After leaving, he took on low-paying jobs, including as a security guard, before eventually finding employment as a cooling engineer. He was made redundant at about the same time that Louise ended their relationship.
One of three children, his older brother Bradley was jailed in 2018 at the age of 23 for deliberately chasing and running over Soban Khan, 18, and Jahshua Francis, 19, after they threw a bottle at his prized Ford Mustang following an altercation outside a bar in Enfield.
He was jailed for life and told that he would have to serve a minimum of 23 years before he would become eligible for parole following a trial at the Old Bailey.
Friends said Clifford was close to his older brother and had been devastated by his conviction. He visited his brother every other week in prison and refused to condemn what he did.
It can also be revealed that Clifford called his brother in prison to discuss the purchase of his new crossbow on at least two occasions, once on July 1 and once on July 8, the day before the murders.
Clifford and Louise met online on the Bumble dating app. Over the course of their 18-month-long relationship, her friends noticed that she had become different.
There were never any reports to police of controlling or coercive behaviour but, after the couple broke up, Louise wrote a list on her phone reminding her why she had to leave him.
She said he made racist, misogynistic and transphobic comments and would constantly belittle her.
Clifford also bragged to friends about becoming involved in road rage incidents and made “macho” comments about how he thought violence was acceptable.
Throughout his relationship with Louise, Clifford was having affairs with other women.
One woman, who was unaware he was going out with Louise, believed that she was his girlfriend. Clifford texted the woman minutes before he launched his murderous assault, telling her simply: “Sorry Sam”.
Just two days after Louise ended the relationship, Clifford began plotting his attack on the Hunt family. He continued going to the gym, seeing other women and going on nights out with friends.
Clifford purchasing rope three days before the attack. Image / Hertfordshire Constabulary
At the same time, however, he began buying weapons and restraints that he planned to use in the attack, the court heard.
On June 28, he began searching for crossbows while simultaneously looking at pornographic videos.
On July 3, he ordered a Hori-Zone Komet MXT-405 Compound crossbow and a pack of six crossbow bolts through the website Tactical Archery. On July 6, he purchased a Dalstrong Phantom Series 10in steel knife, a specialist butchering blade. He also purchased rope, petrol cans and duct tape from DIY stores.
On the morning of the killings, he visited a garden centre with his family and pushed his niece around in a pram. Just over four hours later, he knocked on the door of the Hunt home and began his assault.
Detective Chief Inspector Gardner said nothing about Clifford or his past gave any clue as to what he was capable of.
“He’s an entirely unremarkable individual. He’s unable to deal with this break-up and has lost his job. He doesn’t come across as a highly intelligent or motivated individual in any way.
“It was almost as though he felt he couldn’t deal with the idea of the personal affront to him.”
After the murders, the police found what appeared to be a suicide note on Clifford’s phone during a search of his home and digital devices.
In the note, he wrote a section entitled “to myself”, in which he said he knew there were healthy ways to get over the break-up of a relationship, such as therapy. He concluded: “I just simply don’t want to”.
Speaking after the verdict, Detective Chief Inspector said Clifford’s failure to turn up to the trial despite pleading not guilty was an “absolute act of cowardice”. The trial was held at Cambridge Crown Court as it was able to accommodate a defendant in a wheelchair.
Detective Chief Inspector Gardner said: “The judge made a number of attempts for him to be made available to the court. He could have dialled in via live link. He himself chose not to do any of that.
“He has put the family through the ordeal of a trial. He has created everything that’s happened over this past week, and the failure to show his face is completely cowardly.
“If he thought this was one last semblance of control, he was wrong. The jury saw through his lies and he was rightly found guilty.”
Powers already exist to compel people to attend, but they are not often used. Judges can make an order for a defendant to appear, and refusing the order can result in prosecution under the Contempt of Court Act. Ministry of Justice officials have said they are only aware of one example in a decade of a judge doing this.
Starmer has vowed to give judges more powers to force criminals to appear in the dock to receive their sentences. If a criminal refuses to attend despite this order, they could face an extra two years in prison.
The law change is expected to be made in the Victims, Courts and Public Protection Bill, which will be laid in Parliament in the next few months.
