Swindon man found guilty of killing wife in M1 crash

Two officers at Wiltshire Police have been given written warnings for misconduct after it emerged that Tracy Walters - who was murdered by her husband in 2014 - had been in contact with the force ten days before her death.

Ian Walters from Swindon was found guilty yesterday of killing his wife by deliberately crashing his truck on the M1. Wiltshire Police say they've conducted disciplinary hearings and are making tackling domestic abuse a priority.

After making a referral to the Independent Complaints Commission they released the following statement:

Wiltshire Police said they take matters of domestic abuse extremely seriously.

Christ Church in Swindon has issued a statement after one of its ex treasurers was found guilty of murder.

Ian Walters, 51, was accused of driving off the M1 in Leicestershire last year to kill his wife Tracy. They were on their way back from a holiday in Yorkshire.

Walters was convicted yesterday and given a life term and ordered to serve a minimum of 17 years.

A Swindon man's been jailed for the murder of his wife in a road accident on the M1 last year.

51 year old Ian Walters was found guilty of murdering his wife Tracy at Leicester Crown Court following a six week trial.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment and ordered to serve a minimum of 17 years.

Jurors deliberated for four and a half hours before unanimously convicting Walters.

He was charged with murder after CCTV footage showed his vehicle moving from the M1's middle lane to the hard shoulder moments before it crashed.

Mrs Walters died in hospital two days after the 4x4 veered off the southbound M1 on March 21 last year.

Her husband, a former bank worker, told jurors he could think of "no reasonable reason" for the crash and could remember nothing for more than two hours beforehand.

But a police inquiry established that Walters and his wife, who married in Cyprus in 2012, had sought counselling after a string of rows caused by his unreasonable sexual demands.

Witnesses at the trial likened the crash, which sent items of luggage flying into the air, to a small explosion.

The first witness in the trial, motorist Robin Goss, said the driver of the pick-up appeared to have made a "conscious, deliberate" decision to steer towards the hard shoulder.

A Swindon man's been found guilty of murdering his wife by deliberately steering their pick-up truck off a motorway at up to 84mph.

Ian Walters claimed to remember nothing of the journey leading up to the crash on the M1, which saw his car "implode" on an embankment near Markfield, Leicestershire.

But text messages sent by his wife Tracy proved that the 51-year-old was "driving and volatile" as the couple returned home from a make-or-break week away at a cottage in North Yorkshire.

A six-week trial at Leicester Crown Court also heard that Walters, a church treasurer and driving test examiner, was questioned over claims of domestic abuse a week before the murder.