Jamie Starbuck Sentenced to 30 Years for Murdering Wife Debbie Cooper

Jamie Starbuck, a British man who strangled his new wife eight days after their wedding and then spent her inheritance traveling through 32 countries, was sentenced to 30 years in prison, the New York Post reported, citing News.com.au, The Telegraph and the podcast “Missing Debbie.”

Starbuck met Debbie Cooper at a local social gathering in July 2009. They moved in together three months later and married in 2010, ten months after meeting.

World Trip Funded by Her Inheritance

Straight after the wedding, Starbuck told Cooper he had won a European photography competition and proposed a long round-the-world trip. Cooper had inherited $283,000, which was transferred into a joint account right after the marriage and then withdrawn by Starbuck, Nottinghamshire Police found.

For nearly two years, emails sent regularly from Cooper’s account kept her family and friends in Britain believing she was alive and traveling with him. The messages described life in an eco-village in Nicaragua, where she was said to be farming and meditating. When relatives asked for photos or a voice call, Starbuck replied that using electronic devices was difficult.

Friends Raise Alarm in 2012

Friends grew suspicious when the location of emails sent under Cooper’s name did not match Starbuck’s social media check-ins. They tracked down his disabled ex-wife, Helen, who told them Starbuck had taken her pension in the past and had searched on a computer for “want to kill wife.” The friends filed a missing-person report with police in March 2012.

Investigators confirmed Cooper’s passport had expired with no record of her ever leaving the country. A forensic linguist analyzed the emails and concluded Starbuck had written them himself, turning the case into a murder investigation with no body.

Arrest at Heathrow, 2013

Starbuck had spent $123,000 of Cooper’s money by the time he flew into London Heathrow Airport in January 2013, where he was arrested. An unsent confession draft was found on his laptop, in which he wrote that he had wanted it to end quickly but it had dragged on.

He confessed to strangling Cooper eight days after the wedding, then mutilating and burning her body. At sentencing, Judge Michael Stokes said: “I have dealt with over 75 murder cases, but I find it difficult to recall one so horrific,” and called it “an extremely bizarre and inhuman crime that demonstrates the limitlessness of human evil.”

Cooper’s family said they had lived for almost three years believing their sister was alive and happily traveling with her husband.

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