Husband's anger as bag snatch killer gets life

The husband of the murdered costume designer Elizabeth Sherlock has turned his anger on critics who he claimed blamed his wife for her own death. At the Old Bailey yesterday, Jackie Moorhouse was cleared of the murder and man-slaughter of Mrs Sherlock, but her drug addict partner, Mark Woolley, was sentenced to life.

Speaking outside the court, Peter Sherlock defended his wife's right to fight back against the handbag thief in a spur of the moment act that led to her being dragged along by a getaway car and killed. Mr Sherlock said: "The impression one gets is that what took place was somehow Liz's fault, but people who are dependent on drugs do not have to resort to crime to feed their dependency.

"An aspect of this that concerns me is the suggestion that Liz should not have fought back and that by doing so she somehow invited her fate. The suggestion made by counsel that she should somehow have cut her losses is appalling – it just suggests that we should all have the word victim tattooed on our foreheads."

Yesterday Woolley, 36, was told by the trial judge that he was "eking out a worthless existence" when he drove over Mrs Sherlock, 42, who had clung to his car to try to stop him from escaping with her handbag. Moorhouse, 24, was jailed for three years for theft after she admitted snatching Mrs Sherlock's bag at Euston station. Moorhouse, also a heroin addict, may be eligible for release in 10 months.

After the case, Mr Sherlock backed his wife for chasing Moorhouse out of the station. She was said to have thrown herself on to the getaway car and clung to the windscreen wipers as Woolley sped off.

She was thrown on to the road after he made a series of desperate manoeuvres and he then drove off smiling, witnesses said. The couple were later seen walking arm in arm. They used a cash card found in the bag to withdraw £100, which they used to buy drugs.

Mr Sherlock said he was convinced of Woolley's guilt after hearing the evidence during the three-week trial. Woolley was convicted of the murder on Thursday. Mr Sherlock said: "We will never know precisely what did happen on Easter Monday. My family doubts very much that Liz did throw herself on this car, but even if she did, it did not condone what happened. What he did to Liz was to him a mere blip in his existence. They stole a handbag, he drove over some 'obstruction' in the road and then used what they found in that bag to get drugs.

"Somewhere in the middle of all this a human life was extinguished – to me it is vitally important that everyone should be asserting that human life is sacred and is not something to be tossed aside like a discarded sweet wrapper."

Woolley and Moorhouse, who lived together in north London, had scores of previous convictions, mainly for drug- related dishonesty. They stole to fuel their heroin habit.

The court was told that Moorhouse started abusing alcohol from the age of 10, was sniffing glue at 12 and was excluded from school because of her drug use. She injected heroin from the age of 15 and was in prison in Holloway at 16. She started to smoke heroin from foil after seeing other inmates in the London jail doing the same.

She met Woolley on her release and smoked heroin every day, said Baroness Mallalieu QC, defending Moorehouse,

She had a boy by Woolley in September last year. He was born addicted to heroin and had to be weaned off. She was not allowed to keep the baby.

Jailing Woolley, the judge, Michael Hyam, said Mrs Sherlock had shown bravery and determination to try to prevent him from driving away. "You killed her by deliberately driving over her at a time when you were eking out a worthless existence by thieving to raise money to buy your next heroin fix."