Two men and a woman face life in jail for tying a teenager to a tree, pouring petrol down his throat and setting him alight in a gruesome re-creation of a scene from a horror film.

Simon Everitt, 17, a promising engineering student, was thrown into a car boot and taken to woods near Great Yarmouth, where he was killed. The flames burnt through the rope and he was able to stagger a short distance before collapsing and dying. The killers threw him into a ditch and covered his body with a thin layer of soil in an attempt to hide the body.

Jonathan Clarke, 19, Jimi-Lee Stewart, 25, and Maria Chandler, 40, were convicted of murder after a four-week trial at Norwich Crown Court. Clarke, Stewart and Mr Everitt had all been involved in a tangled love affair with a woman called Fiona Statham, who was 19 at the time of the murder. She rang one of the defendants during the attack and heard the sound of thumping and Mr Everitt shouting: “Jimi help me please. I am begging you, help me.”

The crime was so shocking that relatives of the killers turned them in to police and gave evidence against them in court. Stewart’s mother contacted officers when he confessed to her and they learnt the location of the burial site when Clarke’s brother and sister came forward.

Mr Justice Calvert-Smith delayed sentencing until June 26 but said that all three faced life in jail. He told jurors they had shown great fortitude, adding: “As far as sentencing is concerned, the only remaining matter will be to decide on the minimum term each one is to serve before being considered for release.”

Karim Khalil, QC, for the prosecution, had warned the jury that the case would demonstrate “the grotesque brutality that young people can inflict on one another”. He said the idea for the murder came from the spoof horror film Severance, which Clarke had watched. Mr Khalil said: “When Clarke watched that DVD he made a comment to this effect, ‘Wouldn’t it be wicked if you could actually do that to someone in real life?’. A real person, Simon Everitt, was tied to that tree, had petrol forced down his throat and doused over him and had it set alight. And as he no doubt begged for help, was left to die.

“He was later moved and buried in the hope, no doubt, that he would never be found.” The post-mortem examination concluded that he died from inhalation of a combustible fluid.

Mr Everitt, who was studying at Great Yarmouth College, was reported missing on June 9 last year and a murder investigation began six days later when police received a call detailing the horrific attack.

Detective Chief Inspector Steve Strong, of Norfolk police, said the murder was one of the most horrific and unusual investigated. His colleague, Detective Sergeant Andy Lovick, said that Stewart’s mother was a “lady of extreme moral courage”.

After the verdicts, Susan Lewis, 46, of Great Yarmouth, told of her devastation at having to turn in her own son to the police.

Mrs Lewis said: “I was devastated that I had to call but there was no way that I wasn’t going to. He told me exactly what happened and it had to be reported.

“It’s totally awful,” she went on, “my reaction was shock, horror and disgust. I was just thought, ‘No, this isn’t happening’.”

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