As the grieving husband, Fadi Nasri gave a flawless performance.

Staring tearfully at the cameras he pleaded for help in finding the killers of his wife, Nisha, a special constable stabbed apparently defending the couple’s home from burglars. “Obviously, someone has got a guilty conscience,” he told the press conference three days after her murder.

At the Old Bailey yesterday Nasri wept again as he was convicted of organising his wife’s murder so that he could claim her £350,000 life insurance and set up home with his mistress.

To the outside world the respectable, middle-class couple had the perfect relationship. With an income of £150,000 from their own businesses, they were hoping to start a family, they had told friends. But as the police investigated Mrs Patel-Nasri’s murder they discovered that both husband and wife had suspected the other of having affairs and that their apparent financial success masked a growing mountain of debt.

They had celebrated their third wedding anniversary at a restaurant on May 10, 2006. The following night Mrs Patel-Nasri, 29, bled to death on the pavement outside their home in Wembley, northwest London.

Initially, detectives believed that she had been killed while tackling a burglar. As they struggled to find a motive for his wife’s murder, Nasri, 34, began transferring his wife’s assets into his own name.

Then the police made a breakthrough: they found a photograph of a woman on Nasri’s mobile telephone. She was Laura Mockiene, a 25-year-old Lithuanian prostitute he had met at a brothel that January.

They met up to three times a week but she stopped charging him for sex when they began dating. In the February he took her to Cairo for a romantic break, and after his wife’s death they went to Lithuania, Spain, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Police believe that Ms Mockiene was pregnant with her lover’s child when his wife was murdered, and had an abortion. As officers dug into the Nasris’ background they found that he had debts of more than £100,000, had run an escort agency and that his limousine hire company was used for drug deals.

Nasri, born in Beirut, had arrived in Britain at the age of 7 to live with his father. He had had a shortlived marriage before meeting Mrs Patel-Nasri in 2001.

Charming and witty, he quickly won over the pretty and ambitious hairdresser and they were engaged within months. Unknown to her, he had a ruthless side. In 1998 he had been jailed for nine months for trying to mow down a police officer who asked him about an out-of-date tax disc.

In 2001 Nasri’s father killed himself in prison while awaiting trial for the murder of his girlfriend and her son. Farouk Nasri, 53, was accused of dousing the pair in petrol and setting them alight at their home in Derby.

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