A money-obsessed killer who murdered his wife when she was about to win their divorce battle was today told by a top judge that he must serve at least 16 years behind bars for his crime.

Swindon man, Glyn Razzell, has never expressed a shred of remorse for killing his wife, Linda, and has refused even to reveal where he disposed of her body, which has never been found.

Cold-blooded Razzell still protests his innocence although a Bristol Crown Court jury in November 2003 convicted the then 43-year-old of his wife's murder and he was inevitably jailed for life.

Today, after reviewing the case at London's Royal Courts of Justice, Mr Justice Pitchers ruled that the minimum jail "tariff" Razzell deserves for his crime is 16 years.

Even after time he spent on remand before his trial is taken into account, the judge's ruling means that Razzell cannot even apply for parole until late 2019.

The judge said the couple married in 1983 and had four children. However, Mrs Razzell confessed to her husband a brief affair she had had in 1999 and their marriage declined into bitterness.

Razzell, who worked for Allied Dunbar, himself began a new relationship and his wife launched divorce proceedings in 2000. He moved out soon afterwards, leaving her to look after their children.

As the rancorous divorce case ground on, Razzell was ordered to pay £650-a-month in child maintenance. He lost his job in 2001 and the battle ground between husband and wife moved on to his lump sum severance package, the whereabouts of which he refused to disclose.

In 2002, Mrs Razzell's solicitors obtained a freezing order against her husband's bank account and the judge said he must have realised that he was likely to lose his share of the matrimonial home and a proportion of his severance package.

Mr Justice Pitchers added: "This would have had a greater impact on him than on most men because the evidence in the case showed that he placed an exceptionally high importance on money and would have been extremely resentful that his wife seemed to be getting the better of him in this area".

On the morning of March 19, 2002, Mrs Razzell set out for work in Swindon. She was seen to park her car in its normal place and set off down an alleyway. She never arrived at the office and has never been seen again, either dead or alive.

Her mobile phone was later found lying half way down the alley and it was the prosecution case that her husband had lain in wait for her, bundled her into a car he had borrowed from a friend and, having killed her, disposed of her body somewhere in the countryside around Swindon.

The judge said the jury at Razzell's trial had "rejected as inaccurate several suggested sightings" of Mrs Razzell after her disappearance.

A devoted mother who had made no preparations to disappear and who had recently formed a happy new relationship with another man, the judge said that, despite her husband's denials, the evidence that she was dead was "overwhelming".

Setting Razzell's minimum jail tariff at 16 years, the judge described him as an "obsessive planner" who had made careful notes of meetings and "a series of 'What if' flowcharts concerning the possible outcomes of his wife's disappearance".

The arrangement to swap cars for the day with a friend would have enabled him to approach his wife without arousing her suspicions.

Describing it as "a planned killing carried out in cold blood", the judge added: "His motive was partly money and partly anger that his wife was getting the better of him. The sums involved were not large, but they meant a great deal to him".

The murder had robbed Razzell's four children of their mother and the judge said: "He came across as an extremely unemotional man who looked first at the financial consequences of his actions".

Observing that there were "no mitigating features", the judge said that, were Razzell being sentenced for the first time today, under tougher guidelines now in force, he would have given him an 18-year minimum jail term.

Once Razzell has served his 16-year minimum term, he will still only be freed if he can persuade the Parole Board he poses no serious public danger. When, and if, released, he will remain on perpetual "life licence", subject to prison recall if he puts a foot wrong ever again.