Michael “Jo” Morton, 67, a retired architect, was convicted of manslaughter almost eight years after his crime, after three police investigations and two Old Bailey trials.

But despite extensive searches the body of Gracia Morton, an Argentinian-born violinist who was 19 years younger than her husband, has never been found. Morton, who has five children by four women and found lovers by advertising in lonely hearts column of The Guardian as a devotee of Marx and Mozart, refused to co-operate with detectives searching for his wife. He also declined to give evidence both at his original trial last year, which ended with a hung jury, and at the six-week retrial.

Mrs Morton, 40, disappeared on November 12, 1997, after dropping her daughter at nursery school and going to her husband’s home in Notting Hill, West London, to talk about the child’s education.

She wanted to send the four-year-old to Hill House School in Chelsea but Morton, who had been a boarder at Haileybury, Hertford, loathed the independent school system. He admitted being the last person to see his wife but said that she left his house fit and well.

Morton did not react as the jury, after deliberating for 17hours, cleared him of murder but returned a unanimous guilty verdict on a manslaughter charge.

Judge Jeremy Roberts told Morton that he had put his wife’s family through “years of agonising” by not admitting what had happened to her.

“I am sure it was a sudden flare-up,” said the judge. “I am sure it was brought about by a disagreement over your daughter’s schooling, about which you felt very strongly, and I am sure you were in a state of emotional turmoil when it happened. But it was an unlawful killing.” Morton is unlikely to be granted parole unless he admits to the killing and helps police to locate his wife’s remains.

Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell, who headed the investigation, said that Morton would be visited in prison in the hope he would disclose where he disposed of the body. Mr Campbell, who took up the case in 1999, was inspired to continue pursuing it by Constanza Lezama, Mrs Morton’s sister.

Disappointed by the first police inquiry, Ms Lezama and her family had mounted their own investigation — secretly recording phone calls with Morton, taking detailed notes and hiring a forensic archaeologist.

Mrs Morton first met her husband in 1985 when he was working on renovations at her sister’s house. The couple wed in 1987 but the marriage was a stormy one.

Morton inherited £1.1 million from his mother and moved to a large house, which was constantly being refurbished.

Morton also invested up to £500,000 in his wife’s name to hide the money from the mother of one of his children, but was furious when she refused to return the money, which remains untouched.

Brian Altman, for the prosecution, told the court that the couple separated in February 1997 after incidents of domestic violence. Mrs Morton disappeared a month before she was to be granted a decree nisi in her divorce proceedings.

Morton’s behaviour became strange. Days after the disappearance, while police still considered the inquiry a missing person case, Morton broke down crying and said: “She’s dead, she’s dead.” He built a “shrine” to her at his house. It was not until a third inquiry team reviewed the case in 2003 that police secured a breakthrough. They discovered CCTV footage from Mrs Morton’s Kensington flat which showed her husband entering the building the day after she disappeared. It was a visit he had not mentioned before and was evidence that he had lied.

Mr Campbell said: “Morton represented domestic violence at its worst. He was a bully. Gracia’s death was the culmination of that aggression.”

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