Football coach Ricardo Morrison guilty of murdering model girlfriend

Morrison, 22, used a six-inch kitchen knife to attack Miss Barnes, 19, leaving her dying in a pool of blood at the house they shared in Farnworth, near Bolton, Lancashire. His mother, Melda Wilks, 50, a policewoman for almost 30 years, was acquitted of assisting an offender.

Morrison, clutching a bible, bowed his head, put one hand to his face and appeared to begin weeping. His mother, sitting separated by a security guard between them, turned away in tears. Morrison slumped to his seat with his head down, held in his hands.

The victim's mother, Karyn Killiner, clutched the arm of her husband John, while Miss Barnes's father, Andrew Barnes, smiled while holding hands with his new partner Dawn at the back of the court.

Amy Leigh Barnes, a former drama student who had worked for the Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks and modelled for Cosmopolitan magazine, 19, was a popular figure on Manchester's social scene, where she had met and later dated the Blackburn Rovers striker Benni McCarthy. The pair were no longer romantically involved.