Farmer who murdered lodger and 'dismembered his body before sealing it in concrete barrel' jailed for life
Christopher Wright, 73, was found guilty at Sheffield Crown Court last month of the murder of 55-year-old Richard Dyson
A farmer who murdered his lodger before dismembering his body and sealing the remains in concrete inside a barrel has been sentenced to life in prison.
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Christopher Wright, 73, was found guilty at Sheffield Crown Court last month of the murder of 55-year-old Richard Dyson, who disappeared in November 2019.
Wright was jailed for 35 years following the six-year cover-up, which saw a missing person's enquiry turn into a murder investigation after Mr Dyson's daughter reported him missing.
Mr Dyson had been living on Wright’s land in Barnsley at the time of his disappearance, with police later discovering his body sealed in a barrel hidden inside a trailer at a nearby farm in 2025.
Wright's childhood friend, Karl Schwalbe, 72, was found to have helped the farmer conceal the crime and was later convicted of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice following the lodger's death.
Schwalbe was jailed for three years for his part in the crime.
Wright, a former butcher, was also found guilty of conspiracy to pervert the justice, preventing a lawful burial and six firearms offences.
Detectives discovered that the last call from Richard Dyson’s phone was made on 17 November 2019, with the investigation into his whereabouts initially treated as a missing person’s enquiry.
He had been living in vehicles at Christopher Wright’s property for several years at the time of his death.
Bethany Dainty, Dyson's daughter, later described how her life had become a "living nightmare".
Both Wright and his long-term friend Karl Schwalbe were interviewed by police following the lodger's disappearance but denied any knowledge of what had happened.
In July 2025, detectives reviewing mobile evidence uncovered that Wright had phoned the owner of nearby Alderthwaite Farm three days after Dyson was last seen alive.
A written diary entry kept by the farm’s owner confirmed Wright had asked to leave a trailer at the farm for a few days.
Wright never returned to collect it.
Speaking of what Wright did to his victim, the judge said: “You had worked as a butcher and were skilled enough to do such a terrible thing, something few ordinary people would have the stomach for.”
In her victim’s statement, Mr Dyson’s daughter Bethany Dainty spoke of not knowing what had happened to her father for so long.She said: “I couldn’t grieve because I did not know the truth.”
After they were questioned by detectives on one occasion, Wright and Schwalbe were recorded by cameras in a police car park discussing CCTV that officers had gathered.
And when police were searching his property, Wright was filmed in a hotel praying for absolution from God and that his weapons would not be found.
Christopher Dunn, for Schwalbe, said it was “an error of Biblical proportions” not to tell the police what happened.
Wright was convicted of murder, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, preventing a lawful burial as well as firearms offences.