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Search forMurderer set to appeal playboy murder conviction
12:00 - 24-July-2008
The playboy 47-year-old - the finance director of Croydon car dealers Doves - was kidnapped and then stabbed to death.
His dead body was dumped in the boot of a car which was set ablaze.
Karl Watson, a married father-of-four of Foxearth Road, Selsdon, was jailed for life in 1993 for the crime.
It emerged this week that, now aged 44, he is poised to launch a second appeal after his first was rejected 12 years ago.
His solicitor Maslen Merchant told the Advertiser: “Mr Watson has insisted throughout that he did not commit this crime.
“We are considering applying to the Criminal Cases Review Board to see if we can get the case referred back to the Court of Appeal.
“In order to do so, we would need some fresh evidence or a new argument.
“This is what we are currently seeking to do.”
Mr Shippey was stabbed to death in December 1991 by a warehouse off Woodside Green, Woodside, having been abducted from his £250,000 Kent home.
His body was then thrown into the boot of his own company car which was kept for three days in a lock-up garage in New Addington before being set alight 10 miles away in Merstham.
During the three-week Old Bailey trial, the jury heard Mr Shippey had defrauded his company out of more than £800,000.
He spent much of the money on a luxurious lifestyle which included a motor cruiser, Spanish villa and a string of lovers.
The court heard that Watson's mother Jo had been a long-term girlfriend of Mr Shippey.
Witnesses told the court that Watson had said someone owed him money and he wanted to kidnap them to teach them a lesson.
But the defendant told the court he was not a violent man - and had been at both his wife's and girlfriend's houses the night Mr Shippey's body was burnt.
After the jury unanimously convicted Watson of murder and false imprisonment, Judge Nina Lowry told him: “You kept him bound and gagged for a number of hours.
“You stabbed him repeatedly with great force and then you killed him.
“It was deliberate calculated cruelty.”
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