Carpenter Derek Potter, 64, was jailed for life today after he covered up the throttling of his fourth wife Lesley, 66, by pretending that she hanged herself in a bedroom at their home.
Blundering cops failed to spot anything suspicious about grandmother Mrs Potters' faked suicide while Derek pretended to grieve for his loss.
But three weeks later Potter boasted about the killing to a woman in his local pub just one week before Mrs Potter's body was due to be cremated.
Jailing him for a minimum of 17 years, the judge described Potter's faked suicide plot as a “shameful and despicable charade”.
Potter was rumbled after he told 32-year-old Natalia Mikhailoea-Kisselevskaia what he had done before asking her to move in with him.
Natalia said: “We were still on our first pints when he said: ‘I have got to tell you something’.
“He said: ‘I love my wife very much but she was doing my head in so I strangled her’."
Miss Mikhailoea-Kisselevskaia – who is friends with Potter's daughter Nicole – was left "shocked" and though he was "joking".
She added: "He was saying it with a straight face – no tears in his eyes, no laughter. I thought: ‘Oh my God, he’s done it’.”
The court heard the death was reinvestigated after she tipped off police – and the body was taken for a full post mortem.
Mrs Potter – wed for 26 years – was naked when she was found hanged at her home in Swansea in April.
The post mortem revealed that she had suffered 30 rib fractures along with over 30 bruises on her neck, face, arms, back, legs and feet.
Lying Potter claimed Miss Mikhailoea-Kisselevskaia misunderstood what he said when he spoke of strangling his wife.
He denied to police that she died during a sex game. He told them: "This was suicide."
In a victim impact statement, the Potters' daughter Nicole said she was four months pregnant at the time of her mum's death.
Nicole said: "I feel so numb, I find it very hard to cry.
"I was four months pregnant at the time of her death. At first I was very sad and angry at my mum thinking that she had left me.
"My mum was my best friend. She has been cruelly and selfishly been taken from us.
"Mum had a grandchild on the way that she will never be able to meet. To hold. To cuddle or to love."
Swansea Crown Court heard the police response is being reviewed by senior officers with a "view to improving how things are done".
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