'He will always be our hero'

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For the past 10 weeks, Lisa Bundy has attended court every day to listen to evidence about how her fiance, Craig Hodson-Walker, was shot dead.

"I felt I owed it to Craig and myself to attend every day of the trial," she said.

"There were so many questions for me that this was the final piece in the jigsaw for closure.

"Now it is the start of a whole new grieving process I have to go through."

Three men have been found guilty of Mr Hodson-Walker's murder in January and also the attempted murder of his father, Ken.

Anselm Ribera, 34, and Christopher Morrissey, 32, both from Birmingham, and Declan Morrissey, 34, of Solihull, were all convicted of shooting dead Mr Hodson-Walker as he tried to stop them robbing his parents' post office in Fairfield, Worcestershire.

Adrian Snape, 25, was cleared of both charges but had earlier pleaded guilty to attempted robbery and admitted he had been the getaway driver in the raid.

Ms Bundy met Mr Hodson-Walker, 29, 10 years ago when she was 16 and they worked at the same restaurant.

The day before the murder, Ms Bundy said she had been talking to her fiance about her brother's upcoming wedding and had been trying to persuade him to co-ordinate his outfit with hers.

Ms Bundy, a teacher, said she had been in the middle of taking a maths lesson when she was called to the office and told the news about what had happened to Mr Hodson-Walker.

"I lost my partner, best friend and my soul mate," she told a press conference after Wednesday's guilty verdicts.

"Our love for each other was beyond words.

"Right now I have mixed emotions - this is the best result we could have got and I am obviously pleased they have been convicted, but nothing is going to bring Craig back so the feeling is bittersweet.

'Ultimate price'

"One day I had my whole life mapped out in front of me with Craig, the next day, it had been totally erased. It all seems a bit surreal."

Mr Hodson-Walker's mother Judith described his killers as "mindless dregs" and "soulless entities".

"Family was everything to Craig and he would always try to protect us," she said.

"He paid the ultimate price for that, but he stopped them and he will always be our hero."

She said her husband's health had suffered over the past 11 months and said that although his "wounds may heal in time, the scar it has left on our lives will always be there".

Mrs Hodson-Walker said her family had received "fabulous support" from the Post Office since the attack.

"Although we are happy with the verdicts, and pleased that justice has been done the punishment for these mindless dregs who murdered Craig will never equal the pain they have caused us," she said.

"They may have started their life sentences, but ours began on the day that our son died."