Wiltshire killer refuses plea at parole hearing to help locate victim’s body

A man convicted of murdering his estranged wife has insisted at a public parole hearing that he had nothing to do with her disappearance and he was not sure that she was dead.

Glyn Razzell, now 64, was found guilty in 2003 of the murder of Linda Razzell, who was 41 when she went missing the previous year, and he was sentenced to life in prison.

Appearing in front of a Parole Board panel on Thursday in an attempt to win his freedom, Razzell was asked to reveal the location of his wife’s body so that her family could carry out a funeral.

He said: “I don’t know where Linda’s remains are. I don’t even know she’s dead for sure. I understand the anguish that my children and Linda’s family feel. If there was anything I could do to help with that, I would, particularly for my children. I don’t know where her remains are. I don’t even know if she is dead.”

A panel member told Razzell that his children and Linda’s family had been grieving for many years and wanted to arrange her funeral to gain closure. The panel member, who cannot be named, told him: “You and you alone are the barrier to them completing this. Where can the police locate the remains of Linda Razzell?”

Razzell insisted he did not know. When asked if shame was preventing him from admitting killing his wife, he said: “Not at all.”

Razzell said relatives of Linda who claimed he was violent to her and to their children before and during their marriage were “mistaken”. He said: “Every marriage has its ups and downs. Linda and I had disagreements but nothing acrimonious, nothing that would stop us making up at the end of the day and sleeping in the same bed.”

He said that in 1998 the marriage became difficult. “I neglected Linda,” he said. She became “hard work” and “perhaps I stopped trying”.

Razzell conceded he had been “verbally hostile” to his wife but denied ever physically assaulting her, threatening her or using controlling and coercive behaviour. He said: “I think I neglected her when I found her too difficult to deal with.”

He gave evidence from the open prison where he is being held, with the hearing relayed into a courtroom in London, and he refused to be seen on camera. Among those in the court were senior Wiltshire detectives.

At the time of her disappearance, Linda and Glyn Razell were in the process of being divorced and he was facing an unfavourable financial settlement.

Linda Razzell left home in the market town of Highworth, near Swindon, on the morning of 19 March 2002 and dropped off her partner, Greg Worrall, who worked at the town’s Honda factory, before apparently heading towards her workplace, Swindon College.

Worrall contacted the police that evening when she failed to pick up her two younger children from an after-school club. Her car and phone were found near the college but there was no sign of her.

Police found bloodstains that were matched to Linda Razzell in a car Glyn Razzell had used, and he was arrested. At trial in Bristol, he was described as “a methodical man who planned everything”.

Last year, Razzell became the first prisoner to be refused parole under the so-called “Helen’s law”, which makes it harder for killers to be released if they refuse to reveal where they hid their victim’s body.

Before Thursday’s hearing, Worrall said Razzell committed a new crime against his victim and her family every day that he refused to allow a proper burial to take place.

The hearing continues.