PAUL Grabham has been found guilty of murdering his Swansea wife Kirsty.

He has been sentenced to life imprisonment with an instruction he should serve a minimum of 19 years.

The 26-year-old had denied killing his 24-year-old wife on March 28 at their top-floor flat in Rosehill Terrace, Mount Pleasant, but a unanimous guilty verdict was returned by the jury at Swansea Crown Court today.

Both husband and wife worked in the sex industry as prostitutes and had married in 2008, a few weeks after meeting at a Bridgend brothel.

The body of the deceased was found in a suitcase on an embankment by the M4 near Cefn Cribwr on April 6.

The judge, Mr Justice Butterfield, angrily threatened to clear the court today after family and friends of the victim shouted in triumph as the verdict was delivered.

Passing sentence, Mr Justice Butterfield told Grabham his actions had been “cold and calculated” and without remorse.

“I have watched throughout this trial for the merest flicker of remorse in your eyes and I have seen none,” he told him.

He added: “You have been convicted of murder – just one year after you promised to love and cherish your new bride, you battered and strangled her to death.

“It was a vicious and sustained attack fuelled by drink and drugs that you had taken and it is without doubt that your intention was to kill her.

“But she was not to have, even in death, the decency and dignity to which, undoubtedly, she was entitled.

“You crammed her bleeding and still warm body into a suitcase like so much rubbish, hoping it would not be found for many years.”

The defence case was that Grabham had nothing to do with the killing. They had been together at Play nightclub, said Grabham, but he had left her there and travelled home on his own. He crashed out on a sofa — and she was not home when he woke up in the morning, he claimed.

But Greg Taylor QC, prosecuting, had said earlier it was ludicrous to suggest that Kirsty had been murdered by someone other than her husband.

Urging jurors to find Paul Grabham guilty of the killing, he said the evidence showed the person responsible for Mrs Grabham's death was the defendant.

Leave your Lasting Tribute to Kirsty Grabham

He also claimed Grabham probably waited until the following day before getting rid of the body.

He asked the jury to remember the "extremely important and dramatic" evidence given by the Grabhams' neighbours, Kerry Inger and Byron Williams.

They had heard a row between the couple in the early hours of March 28, followed by the sound of furniture being moved about and a hard brush being used.

Mr Williams had described hearing what he thought was the "high-pitched noise" of someone being smothered, said Mr Taylor. Something else that spoke volumes about that night, added the QC, was that an attempted 999 call was made from the Grabhams' flat at 4.01am.

Mr Taylor said the prosecution believed Grabham probably disposed of the body by throwing the case down the embankment on March 29.

See our five-page special report on the trial in Friday's South Wales Evening Post, including interviews with the last person to see Kirsty alive, and a statement by Kirsty's family about the full impact of the crime on them.

"He called the police on March 30 to report her missing and he would hardly have called the police if the case was still in the flat," he told the court. There was also mobile phone evidence suggesting he was near the body site on March 31.

Mr Taylor said it was significant police found Mrs Grabham's toothbrush in a bin at the flat and he had told people her make-up and hair-straighteners were missing. "He was trying to create the impression she had gone to stay at someone else's," said the QC. "But who, apart from Paul Grabham, would have the motive to do that?"

"It is ludicrous to suggest someone else had come into the flat and committed the murder."

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Read every report from the trial here