A former slaughterman has been found guilty of murdering moneylender Edwin Hiles, 91, by slitting his throat with a knife and cutting his telephone cord so he could not call for help. Moneylender Edwin Hiles' murderer is starting a life sentence

Paul Weedon, 24, was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing Mr Hiles after he tried to rob the widower when he refused to lend him money for rent.

Mr Hiles, of Lancut Road, Witney, was found dead at his home on June 13, 2002.

The jury at Oxford Crown Court returned a unanimous guilty verdict.

Mr Hiles's son, Philip, was pleased with the verdict, but too emotional to speak to the Oxford Mail following the trial, which ended on March 27.

Weedon, who used to work in the 'gut room' of Mutchmeats' slaughterhouse in Witney, stood in the dock in handcuffs for the verdict.

During the trial, which started on March 17, the court heard how he changed his story several times, claiming he had seen drug dealers kill Mr Hiles.

Later, he said he stabbed Mr Hiles in the throat after the pensioner came at him with a kitchen knife to stop a robbery.

He also claimed he had been deliberately framed by an acquaintance who had had dealings with Mr Hiles.

Police investigators used a method known as fibre-taping for what is believed to be the first time in this country to link Mr Hiles's body to bloodstained clothes belonging to Weedon.

The clothes had been found dumped in a black plastic bag in woods near a caravan park in Chipping Norton, where Weedon was living at the time.

After the trial, Anthony Leonard, prosecuting, said: "Police investigators covered the deceased's whole body with sticky tape. They did the same to the defendant's clothing to find out where the person wearing the clothes had been in relation to the victim's body." In mitigation, Julian Baughan, defending, said: "This wasn't pre-planned. It was intended possibly as an application for a loan which turned into a robbery which went wrong."

Passing sentence, Judge Julian Hall told Weedon, of Micklefield, High Wycombe: "Edwin Hiles must have been terrified. You are a big man, over 21 stone, against a 91-year-old. This was a disgraceful and horrible crime."

Det Supt Mark Warwick, of Thames Valley Police, said: "We are very pleased with the guilty verdict. Our investigation was a long, protracted one.

"We are glad we have been able to bring satisfactory justice to the victim's family."

The murder of Mr Hiles, a 91-year-old widower, brought shock to Witney.

He was discovered with knife wounds to his neck in the front downstairs living room of his semi-detached home in Lancut Road on the town's Windrush Valley estate.

A neighbour called in to see how he was. The previous sighting of the sprightly, well-liked pensioner was 51 hours before, at Witney's main Post Office in the Market Square.

Detectives immediately linked the murder to his small-scale money lending and that he may have had cash at the house.

Mr Hiles was no recluse. He was well-known in the town and had often appeared in the pages of the Oxford Mail's sister paper, the Witney Gazette, both as a letter writer and the subject of news stories.

Despite his age, Mr Hiles was an active man. On the estate where he lived for 32 years he was a small-scale money lender, helping people out in bad times.

He also regularly went to meetings of the estate's tenants' association.

At his funeral at Witney's Tower Hill cemetery, the Rev Andrew Tweedie said: "Ted was a good neighbour and a man of the local community."

Mr Hiles's wife Ivy died several years earlier. They had a son Philip, daughter Brenda and grandchildren.

Mr Hiles was a Londoner, from Hackney in the East End. He came to west Oxfordshire during the Second World War to work on Spitfire aircraft at RAF Brize Norton before settling in the area for good. He worked at Smiths Industries at Witney until retirement in 1974.

Mr Hiles did not treat retirement, though, as a case of putting his feet up. Only a month before he was murdered, he had a dispute with his landlords over the felling of a huge conifer tree in his back garden. He also took on West Oxfordshire District Council when it sent him a council tax bill for him and his wife, despite the fact that she had died three years before.