A heartbroken father has revealed the gut-wrenching moment his four children were taken one by one to the kitchen and strangled to death - amid fears their depraved stepdad killer could be released as early as next year.

Sarah Jane, Anne Marie, Steven and Craig, were all murdered by Lee Ford on or around August 30, 2000, in the Cornish village of Carnkie after he had bludgeoned their mother Lesley with a baseball bat.

The bodies of the teenagers were placed in a woodshed in Ford's back garden where they were wrapped in sheets and covered with lime.

Speaking out 26 years on, their grieving father, Michael Trantor struggled to hold back his tears - describing exactly how the killer murdered each one of his beloved children.

Mr Trantor, Lesley's first husband and the children's birth father, who is from Telford in Shropshire, told the Key Witness: Aftermath podcast: 'He got me four children. We'd done it since they were babies, we have a cup of chocolate or something at night. 

'I do know that he drugged them and one by one he took him in the kitchen and garrotted them.'

Mr Trantor also mentioned an ongoing petition his family had set up to ensure Ford 'never comes out' of jail.

He said: 'My aim is for the justice system to come out and do the right thing by telling him he will never, ever come out. And that's why there's a petition going. I just want him to rot in hell. That's what I want.

'I was told that he wanted to meet me, but that's never going to happen.'

The tragic father went on to say he 'knew' what would happen if they ever did come face to face.

He added: 'I know what his reaction would be.

'He would probably tell me he enjoyed doing what he did. That's my thinking of it... because he could just sit there. He knows he's got a sentence.'

After murdering the children, Ford initially attempted to conceal the bodies of his victims - lying to neighbours and saying Lesley had left and taken the children with her.

But he was arrested in October that year after the dead wife's brother reported her missing, and police then discovered the corpses.

Ford confessed to the killings but refused to give a motive, and was sentenced to five terms of life imprisonment.

It is believed he carried out the murders after Lesley became aware of the sexual abuse he was inflicting on one of his daughters.

Previously, Mr Tranter revealed he felt 'so bad' and as if he had let his children down. 

Speaking in 2021, he added: 'I totally think it's my fault and I shouldn't think that way.

'Somebody said they would take the children on and live with them as being a stepfather - and so I feel as though it's me who's let them down.'

The horrific killings became known as the Carnkie murders -  Ford was initially told he would serve a minimum of 35 years before being considered for parole.

However the sentence was later appealed and changed to 27.

Aged 33, Ford first tried to cover his tracks by inventing a story that 36-year-old Lesley had left him and taken the four children with her.

He telephoned the school in Helston where three of them studied, to inform teachers they had left the area, while continuing to live at the family bungalow with his and Lesley's own children, who were spared.

A petition online has amassed close to to 50,000 signatures, requesting Lee Ford 'stays in prison for the rest of his natural life, as someone that planned & executed the murder of 5 people and then covered it up is beyond words'.

It adds: 'We have to live with what he did for the rest of our lives and feel that he should never be released. 

'The effect their deaths had on anyone that knew them was catastrophic. From family to all their school friends.

'He has never given a reason as to why he did what he did or when he actually committed the murders, we don’t even have a day that we can commemorate. He also shows no remorse.'