Drugs cost killer thousands

But just eight months later he was spending thousands of pounds on crack cocaine and launching a frenzied knife attack on a man who he called a friend.

After funding his spiralling drug habit with his wedding savings, Dunn was spending more time with Neil Powell, who was selling drugs from his family home in Woodside.

And his thoughts turned to murder as he smoked pipes of crack cocaine with Mr Powell in a drug addicts' hide-out, off the Ironbridge Bypass, in the early hours of April 29 last year.

The pair became so high on the class-A drugs they started to argue and within minutes Dunn had stabbed Mr Powell in the stomach.

As the injured father-of-two frantically tried to make his escape down the deserted bypass, Dunn feared he was calling for help and would reveal he was the attacker.

Dunn chased Mr Powell down the bypass in his car and mowed him down, breaking both of his legs and dragging him under the car.

Unsure whether Mr Powell was dead, Dunn revved his engine and reversed back over the 42-year-old's body.

As Mr Powell, who had only been married to his long-term partner for just eight weeks, lay lifeless at the side of the verge, Dunn launched a brutal knife attack stabbing him in the chest and throat more than 20 times, before he sped off and returned to his home just minutes away from the scene.

Mr Powell was left fighting for his life at the side of the bypass near to his Woodside home, as his wife and two young daughters slept.

Dunn climbed into bed next to his fiancee, who was unaware she was sleeping next to a murderer.

But Dunn feared Mr Powell had told the ambulance service who had stabbed him as he had made a desperate call for help, seconds before Dunn mowed him down - and Dunn paid people to find out information about the murder manhunt.

He had washed his clothes and trainers he wore when he stabbed Mr Powell to death, in a bid to rid his bedsit of any clues linking him to the murder. Dunn then enjoyed the afternoon watching football with Miss Headley and her parents before spending the evening in together.

For four days the couple carried on as normal, until Dunn lay in bed with his wife-to-be and confessed to the killing of Mr Powell. He broke down in tears as he revealed the exact details of the killing.

Six days later the bride-to-be told detectives what her lover had told her and he was arrested. Telling detectives a series of lies to eliminate himself from the murder, he framed Kelvin Currens, who he knew was known to police.

But his story fell through when Mr Currens had an alibi and Dunn remained the number one suspect of the 40-strong police investigation - Operation Yeti.

Dunn carried out the brutal murder after he was jailed for 10 years in 2001 for robbery.

He served just five years for attacking two elderly couples and threatened to kill them in terrifying raids in their own homes.

Mr Powell, who had battled a heroin and crack cocaine addiction for more than 12 years, had promised his wife Lisa he would stop taking drugs on the day they married.

But just eight weeks after saying his vows he was dealing from the family home and had drugs, with a street value of more than £2,000, stashed in their home.

Mrs Powell said she had tried to help her husband but had given up hope during the few weeks before he was killed.

By Crime Correspondent Kirsty Marston