POLICE still have doubts about a farmer’s explanation of how he murdered his wife 10 years ago this week.

Adrian Prout was jailed for 18 years in 2010 for killing his wife Kate Prout on Bonfire Night, 2007.

But it wasn’t until 2012 that her body was discovered, buried in a pheasant pen in woodland beside their Redmarley farm.

Her husband denied murder at his trial, but finally admitted his guilt in 2011 and told police he had buried her under a feeder in Cobhill Wood.

The couple were locked in a bitter divorce battle over Redhill farm, which he would have had to sell to afford an £800,000 payout, and Prout said he strangled her after a row at a shooting lodge before burying her in a five-foot deep hole that night.

But police believe he wouldn’t have had time to dispose of the former teacher’s body, which took a five-day search to recover even after Prout pointed them in the right direction.

Detective Superintendent David Sellwood said this week they would “never know” to what extent he had planned the murder, given the “small window of opportunity” he had to dispose of the body so effectively.

Kate Prout disappeared on November 5, 2007, without taking any personal possessions or a car, but it was five days before her husband reported her as missing.

Police couldn’t find any trace of her despite a huge search of the farm and surrounding areas, but painstakingly compiled a huge amount of circumstantial evidence against her husband, including from her diary, which outlined a violent marriage which was falling apart, and charged Prout in March 2009.