A JEALOUS husband who strangled his wife before hiding her body in the loft has been jailed for life.

Callous Jonathon Croxton, 25, then laid a false trail by sending text messages from her mobile phone and telling her family she had left him.

A week later, police found 21-year-old Johanna Croxton’s body wrapped in her 14-month-old daughter’s deflated paddling pool, placed in an Ikea bag and hidden under loft insulation.

Croxton had wrongly believed that his petite wife, who was 5ft 3ins and weighed about five and a half stone, was having an affair.

Johanna, who was originally from Whitstable, lived in Hastings at the time of her murder. When she lived in the Kent town she was known by her maiden name, Phillips.

Her mother, Estelle Phillips, still lives in Highgate Road, South Tankerton, near Whitstable.

After the verdict on Wednesday, her father, Chris Phillips, said: “Jonathon Croxton robbed Jo’s daughter of a mother and our other children of an elder sister whom they looked up to.

“Jo will be dearly missed by everyone who knew her. Her death has left a big hole in all of our lives.”

Judge Anthony Scott-Gall told Croxton: “You callously, deliberately and most violently strangled your wife as you could not face up to the fact she had become friendly with a colleague at work and your life together was over.”

FULL STORY IN THIS WEEK'S WHITSTABLE GAZETTE