Teacher gets life to murdering estranged wife

Aug 4 2007

Georgina Ryder  stormy marriage

A TEACHER from Merseyside was last night beginning a life sentence after being convicted of murdering his estranged wife to set up a new life with his mistress.

William Collis, 60, strangled the mother of his five children and then lied to family and friends that they had patched up their relationship and had gone travelling around Europe in a camper van, Preston Crown Court heard.

In fact, he killed Georgina Ryder, 56, at her home in Kirkby, wrapped her body in a sleeping bag and drove more than 320 miles to a remote loch in Scotland where he dumped her in July last year.

Days after the murder, he landed a job teaching IT at the £11,000-a-year Sherrardswood independent school in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire. He then moved in with his lover, Anne Farrell.

Mrs Ryder’s death went undetected until October last year after family members reported her missing.

Collis was sentenced to life imprisonment, to serve a minimum of 17 years, after the jury found him guilty on a majority verdict of 11-1.

Collis, commonly known as John Ryder, was arrested after a nationwide manhunt as he was trying to board a ferry to Ireland at a port in South Wales.

He confessed to the killing and directed police to her body in woodland near the shores of Loch Arail, a remote lake on the Kintyre peninsula near Ormsary, in Argyll.

The body of Mrs Ryder was so badly decomposed it was impossible to say for certain how she died, although a post- mortem examination showed she had suffered a fractured neck consistent with strangulation.

Collis, of Welwyn Garden City, told detectives he acted in sel-defence after she attacked him with a car steering lock in the garage of their home in Spinney Close.

He admitted dipping into £12,000 of her savings before he was arrested.

The jury was told that the couple were involved in a turbulent and violent 31-year marriage, with Collis on the receiving end of punches, slaps, head-butts and kicks to the groin.

The arguments got worse when he qualified as a teacher in 1998 when he said she did not like him mixing with other people and suspected him of having affairs. The violence then escalated when she started to use weapons such as a baseball bat and the heel of a wooden shoe.

Collis walked out on the relationship three years ago and soon afterwards met up with Ms Farrell through the Friends Reunited website.

But in January, 2005, Mrs Ryder told Collis that she had breast cancer and the condition was terminal.

This was later exposed as a lie when Collis checked with doctors at Whiston Hospital who said that she was expected to make a full recov- ery. A year later, she again deceived him by saying the cancer had returned and she did not have long to live.

He said he was “torn between two people” but decided to move back in with his wife to look after her, but still continued to see his lover.

The rows continued, however, and came to a climax on July 15 last year when Collis killed her.