A husband was shot in the face after his wife, her lover and his daughter plotted together to kill him a court heard today.

The shooting at Sandwich Marina happened after several other attempts to bump off Raymond Weatherall, who was terminally ill with a brain tumour, it is alleged.

As well as the shooting, Mr Weatherall’s wife Hayley, her lover and his best friend Glenn Pollard and his daughter Heather tried to poison him, burn him in an explosion and drown him while out fishing, Maidstone Crown Court was told.

“The central allegation in this case is that in the months between the summer of 2017 and early spring of 2018, each of these three defendants agreed that Raymond Weatherall should be murdered, and each of them took steps to carry out that agreement,” said prosecutor Simon Taylor.

“These steps went beyond mere planning and culminated in serious attempts on Mr Weatherall’s life.

"Fortunately, their planning and subsequent efforts to murder him were unsuccessful.”

Glenn Pollard, 49, Heather Pollard, 20, both of Church Lane, West Stourmouth, near Canterbury, and Wetherall, 32, of Molland Lee, Ash, near Sandwich, all deny conspiracy to murder.

Mr Taylor said the motive for wanting to kill Mr Weatherall was his wife’s affair with Pollard, assisted by his daughter, who calls herself Arthur and was described as “a real daddy’s girl” who idolised her father.

“It seems that Glen Pollard didn’t feel he could accomplish this goal on his own and so he recruited his seemingly devoted daughter to assist them on their mission,” he told the jury of eight men and four women.

“The central allegation in this case is that in the months between the summer of 2017 and early spring of 2018, each of these three defendants agreed that Raymond Weatherall should be murdered, and each of them took steps to carry out that agreement...” - prosecutor Simon Taylor

Attempts on Mr Weatherall’s life were passed off as accidents, unfortunate events or harmless coincidences.

It was only when he was shot in the face – the bullet passing through his right cheek and out of the left cheek - in November last year that the police really became involved.

Even at the point of the shooting the trail remained cold until the affair was revealed in January this year. It was then that the bigger picture emerged, said Mr Taylor.

Hayley and Raymond Weatherall married in November 2016 and had three children together.

He had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in August 2015. He was also diabetic and needed daily insulin injections.

Mr Weather and Glenn Pollard had been friends for more than 20 years and went shooting together. Pollard also legitimately owned guns.

His daughter had known Mr Weatherall all her life and called him Uncle Ray. She had access to her father’s firearms kept unsecured at their home and was aware of her father’s affair with Weatherall.

Police had retrieved a Facebook message to her from Weatherall in October last year saying: “Hey hun, I just wanna say a massive thank you for keeping your dad and my secret. It means a lot to me xxx.”

Weatherall was to confess to the police about knowing of the attempts to kill her husband. She accepted acting on Glenn Pollard’s instructions to administer drugs to Mr Weatherall.

Mr Taylor said Weatherall confirmed the shooting was a planned attempt on her husband’s life.

She also outlined an aborted earlier attempt to shoot him in Rainham, a “command” by Glenn Pollard to poison him with an insulin overdose and an aborted plan to push him overboard during a fishing trip on a boat they co-owned.

She also made confessions to two teachers at her children’s school about the insulin bid, but said she could not go through with it.

After Weatherall’s first police interview, she told her husband about a plan to give him a large amount of sleeping pills.

“Despite having learnt of the affair and having been shot in the face, it seems Raymond remained supportive of Hayley and, indeed, upon receiving her confession he reassured her, hugged her and took her to the police so they could ‘resolve’ matters,” said Mr Taylor.

The trial continues.