A jealous grandfather who stabbed his estranged partner to death in Kidbrooke years after she had an affair with a swimming coach was jailed for life yesterday (June 28).

Ron Bacon, 64, lay in wait for 56-year-old Tracy Goodwin before knifing her 13 times after she arrived home in Langbrook Road from her job as a legal secretary for law firm White & Case.

The attack was so frenzied the knife punctured her chest cavity and damaged her liver, diaphragm and right lung, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.

The couple, who lived together but led separate lives since 1998, had two grown up children, Alan and Hayley, as well as two young grandchildren.

Bacon was enraged when Ms Goodwin began to force through the sale of the house they had shared for 36 years, jurors heard.

In the months leading up to the murder on February 24 last year, Bacon grew increasingly worried over money and Ms Goodwin's determination to sell the house.

On the day of her death, Ms Goodwin told Bacon she would not be "putting up with [his] s*** anymore" before she left for work.

His fears boiling over, Bacon armed himself with a ten-inch kitchen knife and stabbed her repeatedly moments after she arrived home.

Bacon dialled 999 shortly after 1am, telling the operator: "I lost it, I stabbed her, I couldn't help it."

Police arrived and found the former Royal Mail engineer crouched in the hallway covered in Ms Goodwin's blood as her lifeless body lay at the foot of the stairs.

A jury took just an hour and eighteen minutes to convict Bacon of murder. He denied the charge on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Judge David Radford sentenced him to life imprisonment and ordered he serve a minimum of 16 years.

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The house in Langbrook Road

Bacon's daughter, Hayley, who has changed her surname to Goodwin since the murder, said in an impact statement: "Words cannot express the pain that our family and friends have endured since my mum's murder.

"My father's decision to take the life of another human being, also mother to his children and grandmother to his grandchildren, had no regard to the effect it will cause to others."

She added: "Our family is forever broken."

His son, Alan Bacon, earlier told the court his father was jealous of a male friend his mum worked with.

"He didn't like her having male friends, he was very jealous," he said.

"Just before her death she had a good male friend and he (Bacon) would get very jealous and need to know where she had been and what time she would be home."

Ms Goodwin had left the family home and moved into a flat in Plumstead in 1997 after having an affair with a swimming coach from Eltham Stingrays' Swimming Club.

Bacon sobbed as he told jurors he was left "heartbroken" over his partner's affair with a swimming coach.

Ms Goodwin moved back in a year later but on the condition they would live separate lives under the same roof.

Bacon had his incapacity benefit taken away six months before the killing and hadn't worked since 1997, the court heard.

The jury heard he lived in the constant fear of losing his home and the family breaking up and had threatened to shoot himself.

Zoe Johnson, prosecuting, said Ms Goodwin had told Bacon "I am not putting up with your s*** anymore" before leaving for work on the day of her death.

She added: "The evidence suggests the defendant was lying in wait for Tracy Goodwin's return from work that night.

"He stabbed her repeatedly as soon as she entered the house.

"The killing happened as Ron Bacon was enraged because he was in imminent danger of losing his home.

"It was approaching critical point, he was in an impossible position.

"He did not want to move but could not afford to stay without Ms Goodwin.

"He could ignore it no more."

Ms Johnson added: "The evidence shows the defendant was armed and waiting.

"The defensive injuries and injuries to her chest show that severe force would have been required.

"The defendant deliberately and in a calculated fashion stabbed Ms Goodwin to death."

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Bacon said he paid the lion's share of household bills out of his incapacity benefit and savings. But he saw his £35,000 savings depleted after giving most of his cash to his children to help them out.

He maintained he knew nothing of Ms Goodwin's to sell the house in the lead up to her death and insisted he had never hurt her.

Judge David Radford told him: "I have no doubt that what caused your anger was by then not the parting of your relationship with Ms Goodwin, that in reality had occurred a significant time before, but the anger you felt that the home you occupied and wished to continue occupying had to be sold.

"I have no doubt that in the course of the hours after Ms Goodwin left for work on that day you ruminated on your anger and formed a controlled intent to vent that anger at her when she returned.

"Clearly, you equipped yourself with a large kitchen knife taken from the kitchen and you waited for her way beyond any normal time you would have been awake intending to meet her the moment she arrived home.

"It was indeed as she got over the threshold of the home that you then brutally and ferociously attacked her with that large knife.

"She did not even have the opportunity of taking off her coat before you launched that attack on her.

"This was, in my judgement, clearly a premeditated attack and you intended to kill her.

"It must have been a terrifying ordeal for someone who was the father of her children to attack her in her own home.

"She must have realised as you pressed home the attack that she was at risk of being killed, as indeed she was killed.

"Subsequently you have told the jury that you have no recollection of what happened. I am afraid I do not regard that assertion as an honest one."