THIS was the moment calculating killer Christopher Edwards decided to surrender to police – 15 years after he murdered his in-laws.
He sent a politely-worded e-mail from northern France to the head of the investigation at Nottinghamshire Police, revealing that he planned to turn himself in with his wife, Susan.
Mr Edwards is believed by prosecutors to have gunned down William and Patricia Wycherley, his wife's parents, in a joint plan.
Mrs Edwards helped him carry her dead parents downstairs before he buried them in the Wycherleys' back garden in Forest Town over the May Day bank holiday of 1998.
Over the next 15 years, the cash-crippled Edwards received £245,000 by pretending the Wycherleys were still alive.
It was not until last October that they were found out.
Yesterday, as the pair were found guilty of murder, relatives said the victims would finally be "laid to rest with dignity".
The Edwards will be sentenced on Monday.
OVER a fish and chip dinner, Susan Edwards confessed to her husband that her parents were dead under a bed upstairs.
They had lain there wrapped in duvets for a week and tucked away until she revealed all when she returned with her husband to the house in Blenheim Close, Forest Town.
The story she told police, with an almost identical version given by her husband, had been one she had 15 years to concoct, rehearse and perfect.
The 56-year-old former librarian said she had found her mother, Patricia Wycherley, with a gun and her father, William Wycherley, on the floor on the bank holiday weekend of 1998.
A row followed, with her reclusive mother, then aged 63, claiming to have had a sexual relationship with Mr Edwards in the early 1990s, so she shot her.
After single-handedly moving their dead bodies under the bed and returning to her husband in London, she mentioned nothing about their horrific end until she returned to the house the following weekend.
Mr Edwards believed his wife's version of events and, rather than going to police and, in his words, "throwing her to the wolves", she persuaded him to bury the bodies.
More bizarrely, after making such an incredible revelation and the bodies lying cold upstairs, the couple still found time to watch the Eurovision song contest on TV.
The night had been warm as they began the macabre process of carrying the Wycherleys, one by one, downstairs.
As daylight came, Mr Edwards began digging a hole for them.
Former neighbour James Hobson remembered it was 7am when he heard a scraping sound coming from the garden next door.
"I remember seeing the man I remember as the son-in-law in the rear garden. He was stood approximately two metres away from the rear doorstep.
"He appeared to be either digging a hole or filling a hole with earth, using a spade.
"I recall saying to Corina [his partner] in a joking way 'He's burying them in the garden' and we both laughed at that." Prosecutors disputed Mrs Edwards version of events – that the couple had lain dead for a week – or that Mr Edwards had been in London at the time of the killings.
They believed that in all likelihood it was experienced former gun club member Mr Edwards who pulled the trigger with a .38 revolver, shooting the Wycherleys twice each, and then helping his wife cover up the killings for the next 15 years by lying, forging signatures, sending Christmas cards to relatives, and collecting benefit and pension money owed to the Wycherleys.
Credit controller Mr Edwards told how they decided to sell the Wycherleys' home in 2005 after he was "shocked" to discover his wife had run up a considerable level of debt.
They created documents purportedly signed by the Wycherleys and the money from the sale, £66,938.09, was paid into a joint account which was opened after the couple had been killed.
Davis Howker QC asked Mr Edwards: "Was Susan living in the real world, do you think, Mr Edwards?"
He replied: "Probably not, no."
Mr Howker asked: "Did you agree to go along with the sale of the house."
Mr Edwards replied: "I wasn't happy to do it because we were no longer in control of the grave site."
The sale only reduced their debts of some £160,000.
Over the years, the prosecution said, the total diverted into the joint account opened after the death of the Wycherleys amounted to £245,705.49.
All of the cash was withdrawn from the account, either by presenting a passbook and signing to withdraw sums in cash or cheques, or by transferring funds to other accounts.
After the killings over the May bank holiday of 1998, the only people seen at the house were the defendants – there regularly maintaining the garden but not the house.
Mr Edwards pretended to be the Wycherleys' nephew. He told neighbours they had retired and gone to live in Morecambe. To others he said they had gone travelling or to Blackpool due to ill health.
In 2005, a vehicle crashed through the fence to the house and damaged the rear lawn. In panic, the Edwards, perhaps worried that their secret in the garden would be uncovered, carried out the repairs immediately themselves.
Mr Edwards told neighbours subsequently that, as a result, he had been contacted by the owners in Blackpool and told to sell the house as quickly as possible because "it created too much aggro".
Then, last year, their web of lies began to unravel. A letter arrived from the centenarian department at the Department for Work and Pensions, asking for a face-to-face meeting with Mr Wycherley, who would have been approaching his 100th birthday. The Edwards knew their time was running out and fled to France.
![Mansfield bodies in the garden trial: E-mail sent by killer to Nottinghamshire Police Mansfield bodies in the garden trial: E-mail sent by killer to Nottinghamshire Police]()