A court has heard that a pensioner who was ordered to pay his estranged wife a £10,000 settlement fee. Has murdered her in a drive-by shooting.

Pensioner ordered to pay his wife a settlement kills her: Mr Michael Reader, who is 70, has denied charges of murdering his wife Marion Price, 63. As she sat in her car outside the family home in Earls Barton, Northamptonshire last December. The court was told that Mr Reader really resented the fact that he had to pay his wife money. And that, just a few days later, he rode past her car on a motorbike and shot her once through the window.

Later, The prosecutor described it as a “cold and calculated murder”. Prosecutor Mary Loram QC said that after the settlement figure was announced, Price was terrified of what Mr Reader might do. Loram said that this wasn’t a terrible robbery gone wrong. And that Mr Reader had threatened to kill his wife if she left him.

She went on to say that “Apart from the fact this quiet, new residential development seems an unlikely place for a desperate thief to lie in wait.  Marion Price’s handbag was still in the foot well of her car with her purse and money in place. It was only a few days earlier, on December 9, that he (Reader) was due to pay her £10,000. As a result of a final settlement of their finances.”

The court also heard Reader, who had installed the tracker on her car in the months before her death, waited for 45 minutes for Price. After parking his motorbike a mile away. She was killed at about 5pm. A neighbour noticed her car windows were smashed three hours after. And her family arrived to find her body.

Mr Reader told police later that day that he had not seen Price. And denies the charge of murdering her. The trial continues.

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