That’s how armed police arrest a double killer who shot his daughter’s ex and her father.
Widower Stephen Alderton shot and killed Joshua Dunmore, 32, and his father Gary Dunmore, 57, in a family court case involving his grandson.
Prosecutor Peter Gair said the former Alderton surveyor shot the two men with his Beretta shotgun on March 29, two days after a family court hearing.
Alderton, 67, who had no fixed address, had written in text messages that he would “override any court order” and that “there is always a plan B”, Cambridge Crown Court heard.
The defendant, who pleaded guilty to the murders at an earlier hearing, was sentenced on Monday, October 23, to life imprisonment with a minimum sentence of 25 years.
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Footage of armed police being stopped preventing a motorcade on the highway before a police officer can be heard yelling at Alderton: “Armed police, get out of the car. Get out of the car now. “
Alderton, usually dressed in black and wearing a baseball cap, can be seen slowly opening the driver’s side door and emerging with his hands in the air in video captured shortly after the killings.
Judge Mark Bishop described the killings as “execution” and told the defendant, who was wearing a silver crucifix necklace in court: “You made the resolution to take justice into your own hands and end the lives of two innocent men.
He said Alderton did so because of his “distorted beliefs” about family court proceedings involving his grandson “after an intermediate, not final, hearing on March 27. “
As he led him to the cells, a circle of relatives of the two deceased, who in court, swore and shouted “Rot in jail,” followed by brief applause.
Joshua and Gary Dunmore were dead in their homes in villages six miles away in Cambridgeshire, along with Joshua’s home in Bluntisham and his father’s in Sutton.
Gair told the court after Alderton’s arrest, hours after the killings, that he had told police “sometimes you have to do what you have to do, even if it’s in the eyes of the law. “
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He added: “We say it is clear that the events were triggered through an ongoing family court case between this defendant’s daughter, Samantha Stephen, née Alderton, and her ex-spouse Joshua Dunmore.
“This is a request to remove your child from the court’s territory by immigrating to the United States. “
She said the relationship between Ms Stephen and Mr Dunmore had ended shortly after the birth of their child and in 2020 she married her current partner, Paul Stephen.
Gair said Stephen, a U. S. citizen, had served in the U. S. Air Force. He added that he will be transferred to the United States.
He said they had asked the family court for permission and Joshua had objected to the request.
Adrian Langdale KC, Alderton’s mitigating officer, the defendant’s wife died in December 2019.
Gair said Alderton had sold his house and was living at the time of the offences in a caravan at a site in Willingham, Cambridgeshire.
He added that Alderton “quickly identified” himself as a suspect after the shooting because of the family trial and the sighting of the white Peugeot.
His RV was recovered through police ANPR (automatic license plate recognition) cameras. He was arrested by armed West Mercia Force officers on the M5 near Worcester at around 1. 30am. March 30, according to police.
Langdale said the defendant wrote in a letter: “I am not the user that this confrontation and the family courts have led me to convert.
“I’ve never been a violent person, I don’t have a criminal record. I have been a respectable, law-abiding citizen all my life. What happened to me on March 29, I don’t know. “