Stalker Trimaan "Harry" Dhillon was dangerously obsessed with his ex-girlfriend but that did not stop him from trying to set up a date with another woman as he lay in wait to pounce on Alice Ruggles.
In his twisted logic, it was fine for him to have other partners but he could not accept that the Sky employee was moving on and had the chance of happiness with the possibility of a normal relationship with an Army officer.
When he heard of the budding friendship, Dhillon contacted the man via Facebook and, using the man's profile picture, asked female friends to tell him whether he was better looking than his rival.
It was just one example of how this immature, manipulative and controlling individual had lost his self-control.
When Miss Ruggles first heard about Dhillon, he must have seemed a bit of a catch.
She described him as "so fit" when she saw a photo of him online, via a mutual friend's Facebook page.
Standing 6ft 1in, 12-and-a-half stone, and broad-shouldered, the India-born only child - whose father was a major in the Indian army - was an articulate graduate of Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh who served in the 2 Scots as a signaller and was training to join the Special Reconnaissance Regiment.
The relationship started online while she was in Newcastle and he was serving in Afghanistan and, despite not having met in person, it swiftly became intense.
What Miss Ruggles did not know was that a previous partner of Dhillon's took out a restraining order against him after he confronted her in the street and spat in her face.
During their all-consuming romance, Dhillon demanded Miss Ruggles' attention, bombarding her with messages and isolating her from her friends.
That did not stop him from messaging other women on Tinder, and he had two other sexual partners while dating Miss Ruggles.
Even as he lay in wait outside her home in Gateshead, Dhillon was messaging a woman in Durham - said to resemble Miss Ruggles - with the hope of setting up a casual hook up.
He had become obsessed, making five-hour, 240-mile round trips from Glencorse Barracks in Midlothian to spy on his ex, tapping on her bedroom window and leaving chocolates and flowers on her window sill in a terrifying late night gesture.
He would use emotional blackmail against her, sending her photos of himself crying and even contacted her mother - starting the message 'Hello mum' - to try to enlist her help in getting them back together.
More sinister was his implied threat to release intimate photos of his ex-girlfriend.
Even in supposedly happier times, Dhillon would often treat Miss Ruggles badly.
On their first date he made her ill-at-ease by telling her the waitress in Nandos was "trying to hit on him", he would make personal comments about her looks to knock her confidence and displayed intense jealousy if she was going out without him.
She feared Dhillon could use his military expertise to monitor her phone and he did change the settings on her Facebook, looking up YouTube videos on how to hack an account.
He also used his military experience to try to explain away why he fled when, by his account, he had just witnessed the love of his life accidentally stab herself in the neck.
He claimed he suffered a flashback to his time in Afghanistan when he witnessed the dreadful injuries suffered by a crewman in a helicopter crash.
But, like his lying account of how Miss Ruggles died, there was no truth in what he said about the fatal helicopter crash.
He had not witnessed it, but visited the scene two days later, he did not see any casualties and the wreckage was covered in tarpaulin.
The episode was another example of how a devious, obsessed killer tried to lie his way out of trouble.
In court, Dhillon seemed utterly convinced the jury would accept his story that Miss Ruggles had accidentally plunged the carving knife into her own neck while she attacked him.
Asked to explain how he felt now about her death, he could only manage to express the feeling that one day he would wake from this "bad dream".
He had not expressed a shred of remorse over the horrific death of the woman he claimed to have adored.
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