Love rival destroyed longed-for family life

When the idyllic lifestyle was torn away by her best friend she vowed to destroy the woman who had wrecked her dream.

Born in Birmingham on February 20, 1960, Rena Beyum Uddin was the eldest of three siblings, each, the court was told, with different fathers.

They moved to Burnley for what was undoubtedly a wretched upbringing.

By her own admission her learning years were 'really sad.' She had no friends and would often run away from home, tear her clothes and smash her belongings.

She never met her father but claimed he was an Asian 'client' of her prostitute mother. Salmon also claimed she was scrubbed with bleach by her mother who was shamed of having a 'half-caste' for a daughter.

By her late teens she had lived with a string of foster families but continued to lack any sense of belonging.

That stability finally came when she joined the British Army on April 4, 1979 enlisting with the Women's Royal Corps in Guildford.

Her squadron became the family she never had -- but her routine life in the army was to leave her with a deadly legacy.

After basic training she was posted in Northern Ireland in 1980 as a data telecoms operator where she met Ulsterman Paul Salmon, a technician with the Royal Signals.

They served together again in Germany in 1983 and fell in love. They were married two years later.

She passed a weapons test in sub-machine guns in August 1988 and represented her squadron in shooting competitively.

Achieving the rank of corporal, Salmon was discharged with an exemplary record on June 26, 1989 after she fell pregnant with the couple's first child.

Her husband had left the army a year earlier and was working an an IT consultant in Yeovil, Somerset where the couple set up home with their baby son.

A daughter followed in 1992 and with her husband earning a comfortable £85,000 a year she had achieved the happiness she never had as a child.

In the mid-90s she suffered bouts of depression due to chronic back pain which left her largely housebound.

She began binge-eating on, among other things, sackfuls of carrots. Her illness left her even more dependant on her husband and the family she regarded so preciously.

In 1998 they moved to a £400,000 semi in the leafy Berkshire village of Great Shefford -- home to Pop Idol winner Will Young.

Through school-runs they met Perth-born Keith Rodrigues and his Scottish wife Lorna, who had two daughters from their five-year marriage.

The two couples became best friends and would share family barbecues and other regular get-togethers.

Rena Salmon had a home with the perfect husband, two children, a holiday home with private beach in picturesque Lyme Regis, Dorset, her own Mercedes and a best friend to share her happiness.

But within three years, the flawless life she had striven for was to collapse beneath her.

As she piled on the pounds, her fitness fanatic husband looked elsewhere and began a steamy affair with Lorna around September, 2001.

A year later she was to be gunned down at her beauty salon in a calculated and cold-blooded act of revenge and jealousy. The affair was discovered in December when Lorna's mortified husband intercepted an email to his wife from Mr Salmon reading: "It was great to be with you, to be able to hold you."

The two admitted the affair but they all agreed to keep it from Rena Salmon and not spoil the Christmas holiday.

The two families even spent Christmas Day and New Year's Day at one another's homes, keeping up the charade.

But early in the new year Mr Rodrigues chose to reveal the devastating truth to Salmon after he learned his wife and Mr Salmon were continuing their affair.

She quickly learned it was not a whirlwind romance but an obstacle which seriously threatened her cosy life.

The Rodrigues couple emigrated to Keith's native Australia in a bid to save their crumbling marriage but the solution was short-lived and Lorna was soon back in the UK.

By June, Lorna -- who had reverted to her maiden name Stewart -- and Mr Salmon had set up home together in Iver, Bucks as Salmon seethed with envy.

She twice attempted suicide with overdoses of painkillers and alcohol. She attacked her love-rival at her home by ripping her clothes, pulling her hair, scratching 'whore' on her car and screaming the chilling forewarning: "I'm going to get you, you bitch."

That evening she returned in her car with her children who were dressed only in pyjamas.

Salmon then forced them to watch as she sunk her keys into their dad's chest and said: "I want you to see what sort of man your father is."

Mr Salmon would divide his time between his home in Iver with his lover and the matrimonial home in Great Shefford. In a final cry of help she made a suicide pact with her children -- then aged 13 and 10 -- by lacing their bedtime hot chocolate with morphine.

They received text messages on their mobile phones saying "Mummy would be in heaven" and angels would watch over them.

She soon realised her pathetic attention-seeking stunts would never win back her husband while Lorna was around and began to hatch her murder plot.

She stalked her rival by driving 60 miles to her West London salon to watch her come and go. In the days leading up to the shooting on September 10 last year, Salmon revealed her state of mind to friends in a series of chilling remarks.

She confided to her pal Leone Griffin she was going to cripple Miss Stewart so she could no longer have sex with her husband.

She told another friend she had, they were trying to have a baby, unknown to her that Lorna had been carrying her husband's child for the last three months.

Salmon pointed to her stomach and vowed to shoot her 'right here.' A court hearing to settle the financial arrangement of her divorce to Mr Salmon was just days away, marking the official end to her marriage.

Salmon desperately put her murder plan into action by tricking an emergency locksmith into drilling open her husband's gun-safe.

She claimed she needed life insurance documents from inside the cabinet after he husband had been killed in a road accident.

The killer calmly selected a double-barrel shotgun she had bought her game-shooter husband as a birthday present and even drove up the M4 in a dry-run of the killing she would carry out.

On the day of the murder she loaded the rifle into the back of her Mercedes, dropper her daughter off at school and even chatted to other mums before driving to Lorna's salon, Equilibrium, in Chiswick High Street.

Inside she found Lorna squatting on the floor looking through folders. Lorna coolly greeted her killer before asking: "So you've come to shoot me." With the coolness of an executioner she squeezed the trigger, hitting her rival in the heart. Ten seconds Salmon delivered the classic 'coup de grace' shooting Lorna in the back as she collapsed on the floor. The cold-blooded killer than lit-up a cigarette as she watched her victim die at her feet.

She then sent a series of text messages to her husband to confess the killing. One read: "I've shot Lorna -- you pushed me to it."