And told she must serve 14 years for Chiswick beauty salon shooting

Rena Salmon, the woman who shot her husband's pregnant lover at a Chiswick beauty salon, has had her second appeal rejected.

She first appealed against her murder conviction back in 2005 claiming that the original verdict unsafe as it failed to consider properly evidence about her mental state at the time of the shooting and accused her own mother of physical abuse against her.

Salmon was told by a High Court judge this week that she must spend at least 14 years in jail for shooting 36-year-old Lorna Stewart at what was then called Equilibrium (now Red Chat) in 2002.

Considering the defence claim that Salmon had suffered a mental disorder which lowered the degree of her responsibility and that her remorse was genuine, Mrs Justice Rafferty stated that whilst those points were "not without force", "I consider that they would weigh more heavily but for the elements of preparation and premeditation which were plain on the evidence."

In the interview, given by phone from a secure hospital in February 2007, Salmon spoke of how devastated she was when she heard that husband Paul was planning to leave her and start a family with Ms. Stewart. She told the reporter that she was living with regret every day and that it had been a selfish act on her part for which her two children had suffered. On the day of the murder she drove to the salon, shot two months pregnant Lorna Stewart and then lit a cigarette whilst she waited for the police to arrive.

May 18, 2007