THE LOVE rat who brutally stabbed his mistress to death and dumped her body in the boot of a car is set to be sentenced on Thursday.
Royal Mail worker Roger Kearney, 57, faces a life sentence for the murder of Saints steward Paula Poolton, below.
He is due to appear at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Thursday afternoon, where he will find out how many years he has to serve behind bars.
On Friday jurors took 12 hours to unanimously decide that the father-of-two was guilty of Paula’s murder, on October 17, 2008.
The pair began a three-month affair after meeting at St Mary’s Stadium, where they both worked as stewards.
Desperate to stop her from exposing their affair to his partner of eight years, Carol Goddard, Kearney, viciously stabbed 40-year-old Paula eight times as she sat in her car, parked in Duncan Road.
He then callously dumped her blood soaked body in the boot, where she lay for 11 days, until beat officers spotted the black Peugeot 206, just yards from Swanwick Railway station.
Kearney, of Painswick Close, Sarisbury Green, always denied any involvement in her death but jurors rejected his lies to reach a guilty verdict.
During the six-week trial the jury was shown CCTV footage that showed Kearney leaving work half an hour earlier than he told police, taking a de-tour to murder married Paula, of Course Park Crescent, Titchfield.
