Thame Double Murder

A man who stabbed his wife and mother-in-law to death in a "senseless slaughter" at their Oxfordshire home has been sentence to life in prison and will serve a minimum of 36 years.

Turkish national Ensar Gol, 22, returned home in the early hours of the morning, took a knife from the kitchen and went upstairs to the bedroom where he repeatedly stabbed his 28-year-old wife, Michala.

Her mother, Julie Sahin, 50, and a family friend, Casey Wilson, 20, ran upstairs and tried to intervene but were also both stabbed, Mrs Sahin fatally.

Gol, of Ireton Court in Thame, Oxfordshire, was convicted yesterday of two counts of murder and one of attempted murder on September 4 last year at Oxford Crown Court after a seven-day trial.

He will be sentenced at the same court at 10am this morning.

During the trial prosecutor Dafydd Enoch told the court: "He was clearly unhappy. The marriage was clearly unhappy. He was clearly homesick.

"But none of this can even begin to explain the cold acts of murder in which he indulged: senseless slaughter born out of premeditated ruthless violence.''

Thames Valley Police said Gol met Michala while she was on holiday in Turkey, and after a long-distance relationship they got married in March 2011.

They had two children together, and in August 2011 Gol moved to the UK.

Witnesses described Gol as being possessive and jealous and said he had made threats to kill her, police said.

On the night of the murders Gol failed to turn up to work, and he went to have sex at the home of a woman whom he had met the previous month.

At around 1.15am that night he went to visit his mother-in-law's husband at a takeaway shop, and asked what would happen to his children if something happened to his wife and mother-in-law.

Then at about 2.10am he returned home to attack his victims.