A mum who arranged for her ex-husband and love rival to fight to the death in an alleyway has been jailed.

Asta Juskauskiene, 35, of Iron Mill Lane, Crayford, near Dartford, had denied orchestrating the killing of ex-partner 42-year-old Giedrius Juskauskas who was was fatally stabbed by her younger lover.

Last month a jury found the care worker was guilty of murder and perverting the course of justice following a trial at the Old Bailey.

She was sentenced on Friday to 24 years for murder, and two years for perverting the court of justice, to run concurrently.

A jury had heard how ex-husband Giedrius Juskauskas was stabbed to death by Juskauskiene’s new boyfriend, Mantas Kvedaras, 25.

The younger love rival pleaded guilty to his murder at a trial in October and was also sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Emergency services were called to the fatal attack in a Stratford alleyway in June after a witness found the 42-year-old lying on the floor bleeding from the neck, but he died at the scene.

Officers established Juskauskiene had been in contact with her ex-husband and new lover in the hours leading up to the murder and said she was "key to orchestrating the fatal meeting".

She had been continuing a physical relationship with Giedrius – a Lithuanian national who had been living in London for around a decade and with who she had a child – despite their divorce in December 2018.

A post-mortem found the Eastern European had at least 35 separate stab wounds to his body, chest and neck and some of his bones had been severely damaged.

In the days following his death, the mum arranged for removal of her lover Kvedaras’s belongings from her home, where he continued to stay before his arrest.

She also consistently lied to police during interview and deleted potentially incriminating text messages from her phone.

In a statement read out to the court, Giedrius’s family spoke of the "colossal and irreparable hole" in their lives following his death.

His mother said: “I cannot find the words, if there are any to explain, the heart-breaking and devastating concoction of feelings that conjured inside me when I registered that I was never going to see my son again, that he would never walk through my front door, he would never evoke in me a sense of contentment and completion, he would never have the chance to laugh again, he would never be living, he would never be.”

Detective Chief Inspector Laurence Smith said: “This was a calculated, merciless attack and I cannot begin to imagine how frightened Giedrius must have been in his last moments.

“While I know that we can never take away Giedrius’s family’s pain at losing him, I hope that they find some small comfort in the fact that the justice they so deserve has come to pass and this pair are paying the price for their wicked actions.”

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