By the time ex-soldier Clifford, 26, a figure captured on CCTV dressed all in black, had left the Hunt residence, a happy, loving family of five had been reduced to a family of two.
The contrast between the sheer ordinariness of the surroundings – the leafy suburbs of Bushey, Hertfordshire – with the events which unfolded inside the detached house in Ashlyn Close is hard to take in, even now: Mr Hunt’s wife Carol, 61, stabbed to death with a butcher’s knife, sisters Hannah, 28, and Louise, 25, executed with a crossbow, and Louise also raped, it can now be reported, by ex-boyfriend Clifford.
The timeline of July 9 reveals the full extent of his wickedness.
In between attacking Mrs Hunt when she answered the front door and attacking beautician Hannah when she returned home from work, Clifford subjected Louise to a ‘violent, sexual act of spite’.
She was bound by her wrists and ankle with duct tape and probably gagged before being violated.
The chilling sound of ‘whooshing’, consistent with a crossbow being discharged, was recorded on the doorbell security system at 6.50pm.
This meant her ordeal which began when she returned from a pod in the garden – where she ran her dog grooming studio – lasted more than two-and-a-half hours, a harrowing fact that has been lost in the blanket media coverage. Mr Hunt, BBC Radio 5 Live’s racing commentator, and eldest daughter Amy were not at home.
He has since spoken about ‘the horrid evil that’s swept through our lives, wreaking devastation on an unimaginable scale’.
For the past week they have been cruelly reminded of that evil – not that they could ever forget – because Clifford, having pleaded guilty to murder in January, pleaded not guilty to rape, thus forcing them to go through the trauma of a court case.
One distressing piece of evidence – which epitomised both his cruelty and depravity – was that Carol was found in the same room, off the hall, where Louise was raped and killed.
Her clients were collecting and dropping off their dogs just a few yards away in the garden when Clifford first entered the house and were oblivious to the plight of Mrs Hunt, his first victim, or the mortal danger facing Louise.
Mr Hunt, who was sitting with relatives in the public gallery at Cambridge Crown Court, had to listen to these details again and hung his head at times.
Clifford, on the other hand, was too cowardly to sit in the dock, choosing instead to remain in his cell at HMP Belmarsh.
He was tried and convicted in his absence. A girlfriend or wife murdered by a jilted boyfriend or husband, or vice versa, is sadly not unusual. However, this was not a crime of passion committed in a burst of sudden, uncontrolled anger but a cold, calculated, prolonged onslaught in which all three Hunt women were deliberately targeted because Clifford ‘correctly assumed’ the family had encouraged Louise to end their 18-month relationship.
After Clifford was arrested, police found a note that he had written. One sentence read: ‘I could be a better man. But I choose not to.’
His perceived sense of betrayal was beyond comprehension given that he slept with other women and repeatedly belittled Louise after she allowed him into her life following their introduction through dating site Bumble in around January 2023.
Admittedly, Clifford initially presented well.
He was a good looking, well-turned out former soldier who had served with the Queen’s Dragoon Guards and was about to start a decent job at a fire protection and security installation firm in St Albans.He watched a number of his videos, police would later discover, which feature the self-styled ‘misogynist influencer’ talking about hitting and choking women, trashing their belongings, and stopping them going out.
Clifford also shocked dog lover Louise’s friends at a gathering the couple were hosting by watching clips of animals being harmed – something he thought was funny.
This was not the only time he behaved inappropriately in public.
During a discussion about a road rage incident, Clifford embarrassed himself by justifying the use of violence.
It’s easy to understand why.
In 2018, at the Old Bailey, his older brother Bradley, now 30, was convicted of murder and attempted GBH for deliberately mowing down two teenagers on a moped – one survived, the other didn’t – after they smashed a bottle over his £35,000 Ford Mustang when a row erupted outside a bar.
Two brothers now both serving life.
Louise knew about Bradley because, apart from anything else, Clifford visited him in prison every other week but never accepted the reason why his brother was serving life, it emerged in court – hence he made no secret of his views about violence.
‘He’s telling people these stories and that’s when she [Louise] thinks: ‘He’s not the man for me’,’ Detective Chief Inspector Nick Gardner, of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Major Crime Unit, told journalists.
The final straw came at a friend’s wedding in Scarborough when Clifford ‘implied’ that he had cheated on her.