A retired American millionaire who stabbed his wife to death in Worcestershire as he battled to stop her benefiting from their impending divorce has been convicted of murder.

A jury took less than four hours to unanimously convict 65-year-old Harold Landry of murdering Lucy Landry and reject his claim that he was provoked into killing her at their home near Pershore.

Landry, who told his seven-day trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court that he could not remember inflicting 23 stab wounds on his wife, will be sentenced on Friday.

The jury of eight women and four men had heard seven days of evidence about the death of Mrs Landry, who was left to die in a hedge beside her three-storey home on the upmarket Besford Court estate late on February 1 last year.

Landry did not dispute that he had killed his 38-year-old wife, but claimed he was guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter by reason of provocation.

But prosecutor Rachel Brand QC told the jury that shortly before the killing, Landry informed a neighbour that he did not want to give his wife money and had also changed his will.

During the trial, it also emerged that Landry - who made his fortune after founding a firm which designed cranes for oil rigs - first met his eventual victim in an internet chatroom and travelled to the UK to meet her.

The couple then married, but by August 2009 their relationship had broken down and Mrs Landry began an affair with an old school friend.

In the months that followed, the Landrys were living in separate bedrooms at their matrimonial home, and the defendant also began a relationship with a woman who lived nearby.

After the murder, Landry, who is originally from Louisiana, drove to his new partner's cottage to tell her "something awful" had happened.

When he arrived at the property, the court heard, Landry gave his new partner three banker's drafts for a total of £30,000, a bundle of cash, as well as the keys to his car and several signed blank cheques. He then set off to walk back to his home but was arrested by police in a country lane.