A businesswoman who paid a hitman pnds stlg 10,000

A businesswoman who paid a hitman pnds stlg 10,000 to murder her common law husband so she could take his business and collect on his life assurance was jailed for life today.

(Tues)

Grandmother Angela Bristow, 50, was terrified of being left penniless on the streets if she separated from the partner she loathed.

For months she begged customers and colleagues at her profitable bakers shop to help get rid of common-law husband Mario Commatteo, 48.

Bristow saved up for the hit by slipping money from the till into the lining of her handbag.

The mother-of-two finally contracted ruthless killer Raymond Ryan, 35, through middleman Paul Hayter, 35 and paid them with cash hidden in a basket of sandwiches.

As Bristow worked in the shop early in the morning, the killer shot Mr Commatteo dead outside the couple’s Surrey home.

Bristow, who had joked about Mr Commatteo’s death a fortnight after the killing, showed no emotion as she was the first to be unanimously convicted of murder yesterday.

(Mon)

Ryan and Hater were each convicted by the jury of murder today by a majority of 10-to-two.

The court heard Ryan planned the murder to the last detail and confront Mr Commatteo with a sawn-off shotgun as he left for work from his home in Whyteleafe, Surrey.

But he made a fatal error by confessing to his girlfriend and she told police after struggling to keep the secret for two months.

And far from playing the part of a grieving widow Bristow was caught on a covert surveillance tape making a joke about the murder to a deliveryman just 15 days after the event.

She stood to gain from a series of insurance policies amounting to about pnds stlg 160,000 as well as looking forward to sole ownership of their pnds stlg 200,000 home in Whyteleafe Hill.

And sentencing each defendant to life imprisonment, the judge, the Recorder of London Michael Hyam, told them: ‘You have been convicted of committing the wicked offence of murder.

‘

And he turned to each of the three individually: ‘You Angela Bristow out of hatred of the man you lived with.

‘You Raymond Ryan out of the greed for the money you were offered to carry out the pitiless killing of Mario Commatteo.

‘And you Paul Hayter again from greed.

Had you refused as others did to help Angela Bristow the murder might not have been committed.

‘All of you joined in this enterprise without any regard for the sanctity of human life and did so for base motives.

‘

The only reaction came from Hayter who shook his head.

Greek-Cypriot Bristow and Italian Commatteo, whose family come from Cardiff in Wales, were both struggling financially when they met in 1991.

Unemployed Mr Commatteo had been ruined by a previous divorce and began by running a mobile burger van in Croydon while Bristow worked as a hospital nurse to pay for the care of her two teenage sons.

By last year they had built up two bakery sandwich shops in Merstham and Whyteleafe, Surrey, and were enjoying a comfortable life together.

In reality her pnds stlg 128,000 turnover was modest and a profit was made largely because of the slave wages of two pounds an hour she paid her staff.

But Bristow was desperate to leave the man she passionately hated and complained endlessly to friends, staff and customers.

However she feared that by leaving Mr Commatteo she would lose everything she had built up during their relationship.

Prosecutor Mark Dennis told the jury: ‘The breakup of their businesses and marriage would not be achieved without a fight and at the end of the day both businesses would go and she would be back to where she was in 1991 without money or security.

‘Over a considerable period she expressed that feeling to others and repeated insults behind his back.

She expressed frustration he was holding back her ambitions.

‘

At some point she decided to kill him and began considering the best way to go about the evil deed.

Bristow planned to slip ecstasy tablets into his tea and kill him when he was ‘subdued.

‘

But an experiment with sleeping pills only caused Mario to fall asleep with his head in his dinner.

She told a member of staff: ‘If I had a gun I would blow his head off’ and planned to buy a gun and hide it behind the panels of the Merstham shop.

Realising she could not handle a pistol and might not be able to actually shoot Mr Commatteo, Bristow decided to hire someone else to carry out the hit.

Simultaneously she arranged insurance policies to cover a bank loan, and the mortgage on their house in the event of his death.

Bristow began testing the water with a long line of burly butchers, caterers and male customers who might be prepared to find her a gun or even carry out the murder.

She offered them cash payments ranging from pnd stlg 2,000 to 50,000 using the cash she now stashed in bundles of notes under the floorboards.

‘I want him dead’ she told a member of staff claiming she was being abused and mentally tortured by her husband.

Most treated her comments as a joke but they all began deliberately avoiding her shop because of her Bristow’s strange behaviour.

Her efforts finally bore fruit when a shop assistant put her in contact with former bodyguard Hayter, who was so keen he came to visit later that day.

He had debts of nearly pnds stlg 25,000 and was falling behind on his repayments while struggling to run his ‘Squeaky Clean’ car wash business
in Kenley.

Hayter would take a cut of pnds stlg 1,500 and act as a go-between to ensure there was no contact between her and the killer.

The exchange of phone calls began on January 31 and he regularly called at Bristow’s shop posing as a customer to finalise the deal.

Eventually he recruited unemployed drifter Raymond Ryan, a Dublin-born rogue who specialised in stolen cars.

Ryan shadowed Mr Commatteo for weeks to ensure his plan went off without a hitch.

He even pretended to take up an early morning chauffeuring job to cover his new routine.

At around 5.

45am on March 30 he arrived at the front door dressed in rubber gloves and a hat just as the baker picked up his keys and set off for work.

Ryan forced him back inside the house and blasted him in the back of the head from close range.

The gunman made a clean getaway leaving Mr Commatteo dead on the floor of his living room.

There were no obvious leads to point to those responsible and the victim’s only obvious vice had been a fondness for cannabis.

Mr Dennis said: ‘There were no signs of any argument, struggle or fight and neither had the gunman stolen anything or searched the house.

‘All the signs indicated this had been a deliberate and cold-blooded killing.

The gunman carried out his work with ruthless efficiency before slipping away unnoticed by neighbours or passers by.

‘But there were no known enemies who may have been harbouring a desire to have Mr Commatteo killed or expressed a wish to see him dead save for one person.

‘That was the woman he had been living with for the past nine years.

‘

Bristow went to the Whyteleafe shop as normal
that morning and was calm enough to leave an answerphone message for Mr Commatteo when he did not pop in on his way to the Merstham bakery.

Knowing Mario was almost certainly dead she said: ‘Hi, now give me a ring if you are there, bye.

‘

The shop’s CCTV camera’s caught Bristow’s nochalant expression as an ambulance rushed past on its way to her stricken husband.

She later asked her son Ian to go to the house to make the gruesome discovery.

As the days passed Bristow seemed barely concerned and after two weeks she was back selling sandwiches.

Asked by one driver how much she had paid to bump her husband off, Bristow replied: ‘Oh, it didn’t cost me much.

‘

She was soon instructing solicitors with a view to collecting a pnds stlg 107,500 life assurance plan and began claiming on the variety of other policies.

Bristow was the sole beneficiary of his will if she survived him by 30 days.

In May she returned to the redecorated house basking in a debt-free and husband-free existence.

She quickly sold the Merstham shop her husband had worked so hard to establish.

Meanwhile detectives mounted a covert surveillance operation to cover the main suspects who were arrested and released in June 2000.

Bugs were placed in the Village Bakery in Whyteleafe, Bristow’s car, Ryan’s home and his girlfriend’s car.

Rumours were rife in the local area that Bristow or her son was behind the killing because of her loose tongue in the previous months.

Many people had informed police about her comments.

Her response was that they had done it ‘because they are f****** whores.

‘

The heat was already on Ryan because of the Red Sierra he used to tail Mr Commatteo’s green Jaguar.

A bug recorded his reaction to being arrested in June: ‘Three days they’ve had me, three fucking days over that poxy Sierra.

Seen in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s why I got rid of it.

‘

But the big break only came after Bristow and her conspirators had been released on police bail without charge.

Ryan’s girlfriend Vanessa Salter revealed he had confessed important details about the group’s involvement in the murder.

Pathetically, he asked her: ‘You don’t think any less of me do you?’ after retelling in detail how he had to close his eyes to pull the trigger and wipe an innocent man’s life out.

But she refused to provide him an alibi.

Ms Salter’s son Lee also came forward to tell how he carried the contract money between Bristow, Hayter and Ryan hidden beneath a basket of sandwiches.

The gunman spent his blood money on a new suit, a catalogue bill, a new van, the pnds stlg 800 gun, bottles of whisky and gifts for his girlfriend.

Police later found murder weapon buried by the side of Stansted Road in Caterham.

During the five week court case Bristow maintained she loved her husband and claimed to have no idea why he was gunned down.

She could only say: ‘He had many feuds with many people .

.

.

the wives are always the last to know.

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Bristow admitted she had told an employee: ‘If I could get a gun I would shoot him myself.

‘

She told the jury:: ‘I didn’t mean anything by it.

‘

Hayter, the man most detached from the killing, refused to give evidence while Ryan manufactured a detailed alibi in a bid to escape jail.

But the jigsaw puzzle was finally and conclusively solved today when the jury condemned them to life imprisonment for their parts in the murder plot.

Ryan, of Whitebeam Court, Warren Road, Purley, Bristow, of Whyteleafe Hill, Whyteleafe, and Hayter, of Valley Road, Kenley, had all denied murdering Mr Commatteo on March 30 last year.

ends

addbaker.