A SWINDON police officer has issued a glowing tribute to a former colleague.

It came as Michael Clarke was convicted of murdering his parents, former detective Milroy Clarke, 70, and his 56-year-old wife Joan in their Melksham home in December 2004.

Geoff Hicks, the licensing officer for Swindon police, said Mr Clarke's death had sent shockwaves through the police community.

"I think we were all shocked," he said. "The police force is a big family.

"A murder is an awful thing but the fact I knew Milroy made it all the more tragic."

Mr Hicks said everyone who worked with him would remember him with great affection.

He said: "I knew Milroy when he worked at the central police station in Swindon in the late 1960s when he was a detective and I was a young police officer. I also knew him in the 1980s when he was a member of Kennet District Council.

"Milroy was a gregarious, affable character with a good sense of humour and plenty of energy.

"He was able to communicate at all levels, which made him an effective police officer.

"He had a positive outlook on life and he was always very vibrant.

"He was very popular with all the other officers he worked alongside."

Twelve jurors at Bristol Crown Court sat through six weeks' of harrowing evidence relating to the murders of the couple.

Chilling pictures of their son's armoury of weapons and recordings of several phone messages left while his parents lay dead in their Melksham home were used in evidence.

The 21-year-old martial arts expert told the court of his "sheer panic" when he discovered the stabbed bodies of his parents after returning from a concert at Wembley Arena and how a trail of bloody footprints had been caused by a cut to his foot.

Clarke had arranged to meet friend Stuart Painter for a couple of hours at Wembley, who had travelled up from Canterbury with an large holdall and was seen in deep conversation with Clarke.

That morning Clarke left the family home in Berryfield Park but returned for about 20 minutes, during which time he bludgeoned his parents to death.

Clarke then set off for the concert and when at Wembley bought himself a new pair of shoes, before meeting up with Painter that afternoon. Painter and Clarke then spent 15 minutes alone in the toilets of Wembley Conference Centre, which attracted the attentions of a security guard.

Clarke then claimed he had forgotten his coat, leaving it in the toilet, and also stated his old shoes were put in the bin after one fell in the toilet during horseplay between Painter and himself.

Clarke arrived home after the concert in the early hours of the morning, at which time he said he discovered his parents dead in the family home. He ran next door and called 999.

Prosecutor Neil Ford told jurors how Clarke had kept notes on a three-step guide to stabbing and slashing a person with a blade.

Clarke has not yet been sentenced.

The jury returns today to continue it deliberations on Painter.

"They did not deserve to die this way"

A JURY has convicted Michael Clarke of murdering his parents Joan and Milroy.

Clarke, 21, maintained his innocence throughout the trial but showed little emotion as the foreman delivered the verdict.

The jury, of seven women and five men, took more than 16 hours to find him guilty of two counts of murder by a majority of 11 to one.

His friend Stuart Painter, 22, was accused of helping him dispose of the murder weapon and other incriminating evidence. But the jury failed to reach a verdict on one charge of assisting an offender. The jury will return today.

After the verdict Sarah Leyfield, Michael Clarke's stepsister, read out a statement on the family's behalf. She said: "They were a fun-loving couple who did not deserve to die in this way.

"They would always be there to help anyone if it was required; they did not deserve for their lives to end so savagely.

"The only positive thing about this was that they died together and not alone. It would have been so hard for one to have survived the other, knowing the severity of what had happened.

"The family will always ask themselves why were they so cruelly murdered in this way, but now, at last, we can get on with our lives, now that the case has come to an end, but we will always ask, why?" She said she had stuck by her half-brother and visited him in prison. But the verdict had left the whole family baffled as to why Michael Clarke had stabbed to death his devoted father and mother.

"Michael killed our father and stepmother," she said. "Perhaps one day we will be given an answer, but until that day the question still remains why?"

Clarke's former girlfriend, who cannot be named for legal reasons, left the court in tears and was comforted by friends and family.

Outside court there were angry scenes as Clarke's stepbrother Andrew Clarke was met by a waiting pack of reporters, photographers and TV cameramen.

Mr Clarke punched photographer Lee Thompson, who suffered a cut to his nose and was left shaken.