Gold-digging Australian jailed for throwing wife off cliff

Sep 3, 2010, 6:11 GMT

Sydney - An Australian who described his new bride to friends as 'pig ugly but filthy rich' was Friday jailed for a minimum 24 years for her murder.

Des Campbell, 52, threw his 49-year-old wife off a 50-metre cliff so he could inherit what little of her fortune he had not already spent, a Sydney court decided.

The former ambulance driver, who had been dismissed from police forces in both Britain and Australia, killed his wife during an overnight camping trip just the week after she moved in with him.

The camping spot was just metres from the cliff edge from which he claimed she fell and from which the court decided he pushed her.

Judge Megan Latham noted that he had pitched the tent on the 'most sheer and prominent cliff on that coastline' and that the manner of her death demonstrated the 'defendant's sustained callousness towards her for monetary gain.'

Latham said Campbell had shown no remorse or contrition for the 2005 killing and should not be eligible for parole until he had served 24 years of his 33-year sentence.

Rather than attending his wife's funeral, Campbell spent that day trawling for new girlfriends on an internet dating site.

Kevin Neander said outside court that the whole family had warned his sister that Campbell was after the fortune left her when her first husband died.

'We just couldn't talk her around,' he said. 'She was bitten by love and that's it.'