THE 38-year minimum tariff imposed with two life sentences for the killer of West Somerset College teacher Stephen Chapple and his wife Jennifer was not too lenient, Attorney General Suella Braverman ruled this week.

She had been asked to review the sentencing of former Army Commando Collin Reeves, who stabbed his next door neighbours to death in their living room while the couple’s two young children were asleep upstairs.

Reeves, aged 35, had taken a ceremonial dagger with which he was presented on leaving the Army and under the cover of darkness climbed over his back garden fence to enter Mr and Mrs Chapple’s home in Dragon Rise, Norton Fitzwarren.

He stabbed Mrs Chapple, aged 33, six times before she was even able to stand up from the sofa on which she sat, and also killed Mr Chapple, 36, with six stab wounds.

Reeves had been in a long-running and acrimonious dispute with the couple over a car parking space outside their homes.

Afterwards, he went home and dialled 999 to tell an emergency services operator what he had done on November 21 last year.

But at Bristol Crown Court, Reeves denied murder and claimed manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, saying he had no memory of what had happened.

The jury did not believe him and he was convicted of two counts of murder after an eight-day trial in June.

Later, the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) was asked to consider referring the case to the Court of Appeal under the unduly lenient sentencing scheme, which is open to anybody to request.

However, in a statement the AGO said: “The Solicitor General was shocked and appalled by this case, and wishes to extend his sympathies to the families of Stephen and Jennifer Chapple.

“After careful consideration, the Solicitor General has concluded that this case cannot properly be referred to the Court of Appeal.

“A referral can only be made if a sentence is not just lenient but unduly so, such that the sentencing judge made a gross error or imposed a sentence outside the range of sentences reasonably available in the circumstances of the offence.

“The threshold is a high one, and the test was not met in this case.”