A cheating wife, her lover and his daughter have been sentenced to life imprisonment over a plot to murder her terminally ill husband, which saw him survive being shot in the face.

Mother-of-three Hayley Weatherall cried in the dock as she was handed a minimum sentence of 15 years at Maidstone Crown Court on Tuesday for conspiracy to murder her husband, Raymond Weatherall.

She was sentenced alongside her lover Glenn Pollard, who will serve a minimum of 17 years in prison, and his daughter Heather Pollard, who was jailed for at least 15 years.

Hayley Weatherall, her lover Glenn Pollard and his daughter Heather Pollard
Hayley Weatherall, her lover Glenn Pollard and his daughter Heather Pollard have been sentenced to life imprisonment (Kent Police)

Sentencing them, Judge Adele Williams said: “This was cruelty of a high degree. Cold, calculated and chilling cruelty.

“You conspired to murder a man because you believed he stood in your way.

“That man was your husband, Hayley Weatherall; your best friend of over 20 years, Glenn Pollard; and ‘uncle Ray’, your father’s best friend and a man who you had known all your life, Heather Pollard.”

All three denied conspiracy to murder and were found guilty by a jury at Maidstone Crown Court on November 15.

Ray Weatherall
Raymond Weatherall leaves Maidstone Crown Court (Gareth Fuller/PA)

The judge said the motive for the plot was the pursuit of an affair between Weatherall, 32, of Molland Lea, Ash, in Kent, and Pollard, 49, of Church Lane, West Stourmouth, Kent, who sent each other sexually explicit text messages and photos.

There were “three settled, determined and sophisticated” attempts to murder Mr Weatherall, in which Pollard was the “prime mover”, the judge said.

The first attempt, she said, was when Heather Pollard, 20, also of Church Lane, went to shoot the victim in Rainham on November 20 2017 under instruction from her father, but was unable to do so.

The judge said Heather Pollard, who was 19 at the time, was “desperate” for approval from her father and joined the conspiracy with “enthusiasm”.

An X-ray of Raymond Weatherall’s jaw
An X-ray of Raymond Weatherall’s jaw, with a bullet visible where he was shot in the face (Kent Police/PA)

The second attempt was on November 29 2017, when Heather Pollard took her father’s rifle, again under his instruction, and waited for five hours until she could take a shot at Mr Weatherall, who was at Sandwich Marina, from across the River Stour.

The victim was shot in the face, narrowly missing his carotid artery and jugular vein, and bled profusely from the mouth, nose and ear.

The judge said Weatherall knew of the plot to shoot her husband, sending a text to Pollard from the hospital which said: “They didn’t do a very good job, he’s still here.”

Mr Weatherall still has most of the bullet lodged in his left jaw, as it is too difficult to move it.

A seized firearm that experts believe could have been used in the shooting of Raymond Weatherall
A seized firearm that experts believe could have been used in the shooting of Raymond Weatherall (Kent Police)

The court heard how the third attempt was in December 2017, when Heather Pollard researched insulin overdose on the internet, as the victim is a diabetic who injects insulin daily.

She sent a text message to her father on December 4, which said a method of killing the victim would be to “give him knockout pills and inject him where he injects himself”.

Weatherall told police that Pollard had given her four sleeping tablets to crush into her husband’s food.

She said he had also given her £500 and told her to inject Mr Weatherall with a full pen of insulin when he was asleep, but she could not go through with it.

The judge said: “By the way in which each of you participated in this conspiracy, I believe that each of you will remain a serious danger to the public for a period which cannot be reliably estimated at the present time.

“I also conclude that such will be the revulsion and horror felt by right-thinking members of the public at this crime that only a sentence of imprisonment for life is justified.”