Life for optometrist

The optometrist who murdered his wife and then was helped  by his receptionist to hide her body was sent to prison for life last week.

Narendra Tailor, 39, sobbed at Leicester Crown Court as the sentence was handed down.

The family of murdered Sheila Tailor (34) said that she had been the ‘victim of pure evil’ at the hands of the Midlands-based practitioner. The receptionist involved, Manjinder Binning, 34, was also jailed for life for the murder.

Tailor had originally denied strangling and beating his wife to death, but on day four of the trial he broke down in tears and admitted killing her. Binning denied murdering the mother of two, whose body was found dumped in a car in Leicester on January 10, but admitted perverting the course of justice by helping to move the body.

Binning, a divorced mother of two, did not return to the dock to hear her sentence, but must serve a minimum of 16 years behind bars.

Tailor  who practised in the Northfields area of Leicester  was told by Judge Michael Stokes QC that he must serve a minimum of 27 years before being eligible for parole.

He stood to gain not only £375,000 in insurance payouts from his wife’s death, but also sole ownership of their luxury home.

The court has heard that Tailor strangled his wife in the family kitchen on December 9 last year in ‘a cold-blooded and carefully planned killing’.

Her body was dumped on the back seat of her car, which was then abandoned in another part of the city. It was not discovered until the following month.

Tailor had tried to make it look as if his wife was involved in drugs and was the victim of a drug-trafficker murder, the court heard.

Passing sentence on Tailor, the Judge said: ‘You’re a murderer, a hypocrite and a deceiver of almost mind-boggling proportions…This was a pre-meditated and cold-blooded killing.’

Unbeknown by the jury, he was fined by the GOC in 2001 for practising for 16 months while unregistered. He also reportedly swindled the NHS out of £3,000 by exaggerating claims for services and goods .

In a statement after the case, Sheila Tailor’s family said that she had stayed in an unhappy and abusive relationship for the sake of her children  and that had cost her her life.

‘The fact her husband murdered her makes it difficult to understand. The sense of betrayal will never leave us,’ they said.