Police release chilling footage of wedding night killer dragging his dead wife's body in suitcase after he is jailed for murder

Powerfully-built Thomas Nutt, 46, punched and then strangled 5ft grandmother Dawn Walker. He hid her body in a cupboard at their home near Halifax before breaking one of her legs so that he could fit her into the suitcase.

Chilling footage released by West Yorkshire Police after he was sentenced shows him dragging the suitcase towards the spot where he tossed it over a fence and then hit it in bushes. Her remains were found there four days after they married.

Bradford Crown Court heard Nutt lied to her family, blaming her disappearance on her mental health, sent them false texts supposedly from her, and convinced her youngest daughter to help try to find her, all the while knowing she was dead.

He had controlled his 52-year-old victim for years and isolated her from members of family, her sister told the court.

Sentencing, Judge Jonathan Rose told him: "Dawn Walker died because you are a bully, used to getting your own way with women, used to controlling and manipulating women and used to using your considerable size advantage to inflict violence on women if you considered it necessary to do so."

Nutt killed the mother-of-three hours after their wedding when they returned home to Shirley Grove, Lightcliffe, on the night of October 27.

He told police they had gone on honeymoon to Skegness the next day, but the judge said there was no evidence to support that claim and he was sure Ms Walker was already dead.

The killer "desecrated" her body by breaking bones to make her fit in the suitcase, Judge Rose said.