A couple from Beccles were convicted today of murdering an elderly woman and her adopted daughter in a botched £800,000 life insurance scam

A couple from Beccles were convicted today of murdering an elderly woman and her adopted daughter in a botched £800,000 life insurance scam.

Michael Millcroft, 46, and his wife Anita Mansfield, 36, were both convicted of two counts of murder after a six-week trial at Luton Crown Court.

But a boy of 15 was cleared of the two murder counts as well as two alternatives of manslaughter at the end of the jury's four-day deliberations.

Iris Jones, 79, and 34-year-old adopted daughter Mandy Joseph were blasted with a shotgun at point blank range on February 20 last year at the secluded home they shared in Hockliffe, Bedfordshire.

Millcroft and Mansfield were arrested at their home near the Norfolk-Suffolk border on February 24.

Millcroft, the court heard, was fostered by Mrs Jones when he was just 10 days old. He was one of more than 120 children fostered by her.

Mansfield and Millcroft, of Black Dam Cottage, off the A146 near the Morrisson's roundabout, were jailed for life and told they would serve a minimum of 30 years and 25 years respectively before they would be considered for release.

They had plotted for 18 months to murder Miss Joseph to claim on life insurance policies they had secretly taken out in her name.

Mr Justice Wilkie told Millcroft he was “a person of low intelligence and weak character”.

But in sentencing Mansfield, he called her “the prime mover in this venture”

“You were the one who was more seriously implicated in these dreadful events,” he said.

The judge described Mansfield as a “selfish, ruthless” killer who had taken the life of her own sister-in-law, merely so that she could afford a luxury country mansion for her family.

Even though, because of her physical disabilities, she stayed in the car outside the house with the couple's three young children while Millcroft murdered his mother, she was even more to blame for the horrors.

The judge said the pair had been convicted on the clearest evidence.

“In your case Michael Millcroft, they were your foster mother and foster sister,” he said.

“This was no crime of passion committed in circumstances of extreme tension, rather it was a coldly planned and formulated and ruthlessly executed killing for reasons of pure greed and selfishness

“Anita Mansfield, you are in my judgment the driver of these appalling crimes over a period of months by the means of cynical deceptions (of Mandy) in the belief she was acting in the best interests of your children,” he added.

“Iris Jones had to be killed merely because she was there and because she was an impediment to your plans.

“You, Michael Millcroft, was so enthralled to Anita Mansfield that you were prepared to kill your own foster mother who brought you up from a baby and lavished love on you. You had no compunction about killing your own foster sister.

“Neither of you throughout this trial has expressed any sorrow for the deaths for those members of your own family,” the judge said.

Millcroft showed no emotion as he stood to be sentenced this afternoon while Mansfield, whose disability forced her to use a walking frame to get into and out of court each day, sat staring at the ground, giving a resigned nod of the head as she was convicted.