A man who poured petrol on his girlfriend and set her on fire has been sentenced to life behind bars.
Leigh Pateman, 45, doused Ellen Marshall as she sat in a chair at the couple’s home in Skegness, Lincolnshire, before setting her on fire on April 2021.
Pateman was jailed for 17 years and 10 months the year before for grievous bodily harm with intent
But prosecutors brought on a murder charge after Ellen died of her injuries on March 2023.
Pateman, who pleaded guilty last month, was sentenced today at Lincoln Crown Court. He showed little emotion and said nothing other than his name.
Judge Simon Hirst told Pateman he must serve a minimum term of 23 years and 145 days at HMP Garth before being eligible for parol.
The judge said: ‘You purchased petrol and moved it from the shed to the room where you poured it over Ms Marshall and set her on fire.
‘Ms Marshall endured the most excruciating pain and suffering from the injuries you inflicted upon her.’
The court was told how Pateman planned the attack weeks before it unfolded and was part of a wider pattern of abuse and violence.
Fire crews arrived at the couple’s home along Firbeck Avenue at around 10.30pm after a neighbour phoned the authorities.
Pateman was spotted cycling away from the scene.
Inside the home, fire officers found the living room engulfed by black smoke and Ellen writing in ‘extreme pain’.
Prosecutor Sarah Knight said: ‘There was little hair left on her head.
‘Her face was so badly burnt and scorched it was difficult to make out her facial features. Her body was scorched where her clothes would have been.’
Ellen managed to tell officers her name and age and initially claimed to have caused her injuries to herself. She had lost several fingers and suffered burns to her face, neck, abdomen, chest and limbs.
Her chance of survival was placed at only 50% by Nottingham City Hospital doctors as she required medical ventilation.
Pateman was found by police at his mother’s house, covered in soot and in bed.
Re-admitted to the specialist burns unit, Ellen died March 11 last year from pneumonia.
In an impact statement re-read in court today, one of Ellen’s four children, Paige Clarke, said that her mother kept fighting each day to see her first grandchild.
But ‘that day will now never come’, Paige said.
‘She became weaker and weaker as the days went by, but even then she was so strong of heart,’ she said.
‘The physical, mental and emotional pain that my mother had to go through is almost impossible to put into words.’
‘She could not bare to look at herself for a year.’
Detective Inspector Andy McWatt said today: ‘This was a truly shocking and barbaric attack. I cannot begin to imagine how much fear she must have felt, and how painful the rest of Ellen’s life was.
‘Her family had to watch someone they love suffer from terrible injuries for almost two years. I hope that they can feel some measure of closure that her killer has been sentenced for that crime.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
