My children's killer should get whole-life term, says tragic father

Michael Tranter said the high court battle over the legality of whole-term prison sentences for the worst murder cases had brought his own family tragedy back into sharp focus.

Now that it has been declared legal to impose sentences which mean murderers die in prison, Mr Tranter said the same penalty should apply to the man who killed his family.

Sarah Jane, 17, her 16-year-old sister Anne Marie and their brothers Steven, 14, and Craig, 13, along with their mother Lesley, were killed by their stepfather Lee Ford in 2000.

Michael Tranter can never have closure – because, always at the back of his mind, is the thought that the man who killed his four children might one day walk free from prison.

Publicity about the legality of whole life jail terms for murderers has stirred up bitter memories for Mr Tranter, 13 years after his four children and ex-wife were killed in Cornwall.

However, Lee Ford unlike the killers of Shropshire schoolgirl Georgia Williams, Mid Wales five-year-old April Jones and Drummer Lee Rigby, did not get a whole life term.

Ford, 46, was given five life sentences after admitting the murders of the four children and their mother, Lesley Ford, in May 2001.

Mr Tranter, of Newdale, Telford, said: "The person who murdered my children has been told he has to serve at least 35 years but he's never been told he'll die in prison. In my eyes that's what should happen. I can't get closure."

Whole life terms have been in the news after a High Court challenge to determine whether or not they were legal. The decision that they had been applied fairly has been welcomed by families of murder victims, including those of Walsall girl Christine Darby, who was seven when she was killed in 1967 by Raymond Morris, also believed to be behind the deaths of schoolgirls Margaret Reynolds and Diane Tift. The three, all found on Cannock Chase, were abducted, raped and murdered.

Wolverhampton warehouseman Victor Miller was also given a 'whole life' term in 1988 for the brutal killing of 14-year-old Stuart Gough, of Hagley, near Stourbridge.

Mr Tranter married Lesley, who also grew up in Telford, when he was 21 and she was 19. They had met on the bus to work. Eldest daughter Sarah Jane was born in January 1983 and Anne Marie, Stephen Paul and Craig Jonathan followed soon after.

Mr Tranter said: "We decided to have them close together so they would grow up together and be close. All that has been taken away from me. Sarah Jane would have been 31 in January. I might have had grandchildren by now."

After the marriage broke up, Lesley moved with the children to Cornwall, and started a relationship with Ford.

The children and their mother were last seen alive at the end of August 2000. The bodies of Lesley and the boys were found in the garden shed of her home, and the two girls were found in a shallow grave in a nearby field. Lesley had been beaten to death with her daughter's rounders bat. The children had all been strangled. Police estimate the bodies might have lain undiscovered for up to six weeks. Mr Tranter refuses to forgive Ford and is angry that there is even any chance he could be released from prison. He said: "I'm almost sure he won't be let out, but he might. There shouldn't be a but. It hurts me really. I believe he has done what he has done and should never be allowed out."

The four children are buried together in Telford – the last thing Mr Tranter was able to do for his family was arrange their funerals in the town where they were born. Ford originally denied murder but later changed his plea on all five charges. The court heard that Lesley had threatened to stop Ford seeing the children after becoming concerned about his behaviour. After a row during which he hit her across the face with a rounders bat, he decided to kill them all.

Ford and Lesley had two other children, who escaped the attack. Ford told police that he went to the garage to cool off after the row and, while there, found a rope. Picking it up he returned to the house, and strangled Lesley.

Ford wrapped the corpses in sheets, covered them in lime and buried them in the woodshed in the garden. Weeks later he moved the bodies of Sarah Jane and Anne Marie, 16, re-burying them in a field four miles away. The bodies were not discovered until more than a month after the killings, when Mrs Ford's brother, Peter Wyatt, contacted police.

In July, the European Court of Human Rights argued that whole-life sentences were illegal because there was no chance of the sentence being reviewed. But last month the Court of Appeal found that the UK system did allow for a review and judges should be confident to continue using them for the most serious crimes.