IT WAS one of the most bizarre trials ever heard at the Old Bailey. Susan Whybrow and her lover Dennis Saunders were sent to prison for plotting to murder her husband by tying him to a sit-on lawnmower and aiming it towards the garden lake. This week, after serving three years, a retrial at the Old Bailey found them not guilty of conspiracy to murder and they were freed. Today, for the first time, Saunders talks about that extraordinary affair and why he has returned home and not to his lover.

DENNIS SAUNDERS is, he says, bitter, vindictive and full of revenge towards his ex-lover.

It is a tale of sex, passion, betrayal and near tragedy between the rural affluent and the man they considered a bit of rough.

Saunders, 57, a former flying instructor, and his ex-lover, Susan Whybrow, were convicted three years ago of conspiring to murder her barrister husband, Christopher Whybrow.

They were sentenced to 10 years and eight years respectively. On Monday, they were cleared of the same charge at a retrial at the Old Bailey. The prosecution alleged the couple planned to kill Whybrow after luring him into a sex trap. She backed her husband into Saunders’ arms; he trussed, gagged and blindfolded him, then frogmarched him to the garden where Whybrow broke free and fought with Saunders. The couple, who are no longer lovers, have always admitted conspiracy to cause Whybrow actual bodily harm. But they insisted the plan was to beat him up to teach him a lesson for hitting her. Murder was never in their minds, they said.

The sitting room in Saunders’ modern detached Colchester house is gleamingly clean with a painting of sword-wielding soldiers and four guns on the wall.

He asks whether I’ve bought a minder, then says I should have bought him some gin. He is spruce, full lipped with a beer tummy, steel-rimmed specs and the back of his tie tucked into his pink shirt.

He fancies himself and is wily and talks self protectively. His eyes look glazed and when he talks, he moves his feet shiftily.

What was it like on that fateful day pretending to be a burglar and beating up Whybrow?

‘The adrenaline … it was like being on a drug. It was bravado on my part. I didn’t want to go too far.’

How do you cope with people who don’t believe you didn’t intend to murder Whybrow? ‘To begin with it was hard, now it doesn’t bother me,’ he says, unconsciously rolling up his sleeves. Do you hate Susan? ‘I’m very bitter towards her.’

Saunders left prison two months ago, having served three years. He’ll do voluntary work and plans to market a device he invented. ‘Prison was sheer hell to begin with. I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. I’d only been in Parkhurst six months when the governor let me out unaccompanied to see Maria – his wife. The first man to go down for 10 years and go out alone after six months.’

He ended up in a ‘semi open’ prison. ‘At weekends I used to ride round Kent on my bike. Just like a health farm. I used to go into the pub at lunch time.’

Originally from Walthamstow, Saunders had three siblings. He can’t remember his father, a roof tiler, who died in the war. There was never a man at home.

‘There wasn’t much money and never much to eat,’ he said. ‘My sister looked after us because mother worked as a tailoress.’

Saunders was the leader of a school gang – ‘We used to nick things to eat’ – but has no recollection of ever fighting,’ he said. He left grammar school, aged 15, with no qualifications and became a lorry driver. At 22, he married Italian-born Maria by whom he has four grown-up sons and is keen now to repair his marriage.

They are together, working at reconciliation, but she does not appear during our talk.

His relationship with Susan started after he gave her 10 flying lessons. He seems reluctant to talk about her. She was ‘bubbly’ and they talked about their ‘rocky’ marriages and were ‘mutually obsessed. I’d never felt like that about anybody.’ He is macho, half Italian and the sort of man who’d like to brag about his conquests. He was dubbed a Romeo, accused of other affairs.

Tales of their making wild love in the car and on his flying club bar are also untrue. But he boasted to Maria of the affair. ‘I was just being nasty at the time,’ he said.

He last saw Susan at the retrial and wants no further contact and only met Whybrow only once.