A court in the United Kingdom has sentenced a primary school teacher who stabbed her partner to death and buried his body in their garden, to 20 years in jail.

The BBC reports that Judge Mark Lucraft imposed a mandatory life sentence and ordered that the convict, 50-year-old, Fiona Beal, must serve the jail term before she is considered for parole.

Mr Lucraft handed out the sentence at the Old Bailey, on Thursday, after the convict had back in April, pleaded guilty to killing her partner of 17 years, Nicholas Billingham, for allegedly having an affair with another woman.

The court heard that the remains of the 42-year-old were recovered in March 2022, in Northampton, but he was last seen alive on 1 November 2021. His body was said to have been buried in makeshift layers of sheeting and concrete.

The judge in his ruling, told the defendant that, “Having moved and buried the body in the garden, you then lied to his mother, numerous friends, all his family and yours as to what you had done and where he was. There was lie after lie.”

The deceased’s mother, Yvonne Valentine, in a victim impact statement read out in court, described the defendant as “pure evil”, while also narrating how she had a Christmas drink together on December 23 2021, not knowing she was just feet from her son’s corpse.

The court also heard that Mr Billingham had renovated a house the day he died, before he returned to the home he and Ms Beal shared in Northampton.

Prosecutor Hugh Davies KC told the judge that Mr Billingham’s death was a “carefully planned domestic execution”, as Ms Beal had stabbed the victim in the neck and disposed of his body.

Speaking to the BBC outside the court, the cousin of the deceased, James Smith, said, “Nothing can ever bring him back and no sentence would ever feel enough.”

Also, a Deputy Chief Crown prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) at East Midlands, Andrew Baxter, after the hearing said the convict, “exploited a narrative that she was the victim of abuse at the hands of her long-term partner, but rather than leave the relationship, she killed him in a planned, cold-blooded execution when he thought he was safe with his partner.”