Kate Dixon – victim (Picture: Metropolitan Police)
A jealous lover who stabbed to death his Town Hall chief ex-girlfriend, after she met her new partner on an Oxbridge graduate dating site, was sent down for life yesterday.
Jonathan Tebbs, 46, was sentenced to 20 years for stabbing Ms Dixon 29 times in the chest with a Swiss Army knife.
He pierced her heart and lungs in a fit of envy when she finally ended their on-and-off relationship in the summer of 2013.
Judge McCreath told Southwark Crown Court that Tebbs was obsessed and possessive.
He said: “I am quite sure that in a very real sense you thought of her as not so much as being under your control, but your ownership.”
Family members and friends of Kate Dixon broke down in tears when the guilty verdict was read, with a cry of “yes” clearly audible from the public gallery.
Ms Dixon, 40, had recently started a relationship with Mark Baynes, who she met on Blues Match, a site for Oxbridge and Ivy League graduates, which triggered Tebbs’ jealous rage.
In a statement the family said: “Kate’s shocking death has deprived her of a life she enjoyed and richly deserved.
“It has deprived Kate and Mark Baynes of the life that they were planning together and were looking forward too very much.”
Ms Dixon was Islington Council’s joint head of strategy, equality and performance.
After the chilling attack Tebbs recited an Oscar Wilde poem before cleaning the blood from her body. It’s final lines read: “Yet each man kills the thing he loves?…?The coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with the sword.”
Before handing down the sentence Judge McCreath said: “She tried her best to defend herself against the brutal attack and, on your own account, begged you to stop. I accept that this was not premeditated.
“The fact remains that this was a ferocious attack on a defenceless, vulnerable woman, a woman much smaller than you and in her own home, with a knife.”
