Nottingham Man Admits Killing New Wife

Jamie Starbuck jailed for life for murdering Debbie Starbuck and disposing of her body.

A man's been jailed for a minimum of thirty years after he pleaded guilty to murdering his wife in Nottingham. 

Jamie Starbuck, who's 36, killed 44-year-old Debbie Starbuck just over a week after marrying her - he then spent seventy-thousand pounds of her money travelling the world for two and a halfyears - pretending - the whole time - that she was with him.

Debbie was last seen alive six days after their wedding on 27 April 2010. 

On 25 May 2010, Jamie Starbuck boarded a plane on a one-way ticket to Amsterdam and then spent 31 months travelling the globe. 

Debbie had inherited £150,000 a few years before meeting Jamie and detectives were able to prove that her husband spent almost £65,000 of his dead wife?s money to fund his travels abroad. 

Looking at where Jamie had been - police discovered he'd travelled to Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Poland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Columbia, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, Mexico, America, Canada, and finally Peru. 

Judge on sentencing:

Judge Michael Stokes said on sentencing: 

"On more than 75 homicides I?m trying hard to think of one as horrific as this. 

There has been an extremely careful, systematic and precise police investigation and I commend DCI Rob Griffin and the investigating team, along with PC Ian Hipkiss from the financial investigation unit. 

Police on investigation:

DCI Rob Griffin, who led the investigation into Debbie's disappearance and murder, said: 

"Even though concerns for Debbie were only reported last year, all our enquiries seemed to link back to Jamie as being the last person to see her alive. 

His activities seemed very strange and out of character, heading off suddenly on his travels. He was obviously running away from what he had done to Debbie. 

This was an extremely complex case, where we had to plot where Jamie had been, where he was moving on to, and consider all the possibilities of what he would do next. 

As part of routine enquiries, we emailed both Debbie and Jamie's accounts asking them to make contact. Jamie never replied. However we later discovered that a number of emails claiming to be from Debbie, sent to her family and friends in an attempt to convince them she was alive, were actually sent on the same day and from exactly the same location as emails sent from Jamie to other people.

Jamie was arrested at Heathrow airport, as he returned from Peru on 19 January 2013. On arrest he was found to have two of Debbie?s bank cards in his wallet. 

Examination of Starbuck's laptop also revealed a 'confession', where he admitted Debbie?s murder. 

We have learnt that Jamie Starbuck is a very controlling man, who engineered a situation to ensure he could benefit financially from Debbie's disappearance. He helped her set up online banking accounts, which meant he knew her passwords, and encouraged her to withdraw from her friends. 

We can only speculate as to whether Jamie only married Debbie for the sole purpose of getting to her money, but he has been travelling around the globe for over 31 months, and we know her murder was premeditated as he went to great lengths to dispose of any evidence, including her body - which we are yet to find. 

After admitting his guilt today, I hope Starbuck will now give Debbie?s family a chance to grieve and have a proper funeral by revealing where she is.

Family Statement

Beth Jones, speaking on behalf of Debbie's family said: 

"We are heartbroken to lose our beautiful sister and cherished daughter. We are still finding it difficult to believe what has happened and we don't think that we will ever be able to come to terms with it. 

Deb was bright, adventurous, and full of life. She was kind, loving and loyal and had so many friends who loved her. She was the sort of person who would always go to great lengths to be there when you needed her. 

She was always interested in learning new things and meeting new people. Sadly this led her to meet Jamie Starbuck who took all that away from her. 

There are so many things about this that are almost impossible to bear. The unbelievable and shocking fact that she is dead, has been dead for so long and we didn't even know. For nearly three years we thought we were communicating with her until, with the slow unravelling of the threads, we knew she could no longer be with us. 

We had no opportunity to say goodbye and no opportunity to grieve. We were living with the illusion that she was alive and happy and travelling around the world with Jamie. 

Everything that we have been told about what happened to Deb leads us to a place of unimaginable horror. We are haunted and tormented by the suffering that she must have endured in the violent act that caused her death. 

Having no clarity about what happened and where she might be is a cruel and ongoing torture for all of us. 

At the age of 91 our poor father should not have to bear the sorrow of losing a child in this unnatural and devastating manner. He has always been a stoical and proud man who survived the death of our mother nearly14 years ago but he visibly crumpled when DCI Rob Griffin told the ghastly facts of what had happened. He has remained so. 

There could have been some comfort if we were able to find her body and lay her to rest. After what we heard today any hope of that seems futile. The thought that her bones lay scattered, burnt and lonely on a remote hillside or in a dark wood somewhere leaves us feeling desolate. 

Jamie has taken everything from Deb. He has taken her whole life, everything that she was and wanted to be, her hopes and dreams and her chance to be a mother, which she wanted most of all. 

As a family we are now living in a permanent state of bewilderment and anguish. 

We would like to thank Nottinghamshire Police in particular DCI Rob Griffin and DC Natasha Farr-Voller for all of their support to the family and persistence in bringing Jamie Starbuck to justice.