text: A husband whose wife was brutally stabbed to death by her own son has described his heartache at her death. Kris Wardle, who lives in Leicester, thought his world was complete when he married his long-term girlfriend Katrina in 2011 with her teenage son, Mark, acting as Best Man. However, less than two years later, the HGV truck driver would be a widower, after his beloved wife was killed in a frenzied knife attack by now 21-year-old Mark after a row over his cannabis use. Scroll down for video . Kris and Tina Wardle fell in love in 2002 and had planned a life together . 'You could have turned the lights out in the middle of an eclipse and if she smiled, the room would just light up,' said Kris. 'If I called her perfect she’d just come round and belt me round the back of the head, cause she knew damn well she wasn't perfect, but to me, that girl, she was just something so special.' Kris said Katrina, who was known as Tina, already had two children when they met and was a devoted mother when they fell in love in 2002 when her son Mark was ten years old. 'They came first, always, there was no question about it, she loved her kids, she loved them to bits,' said Kris. 'Mark was the apple of Tina’s eye, no two ways about it. He didn’t have an outgoing personality.' Kris said Mark was very quiet and only interested in his computer games. Mark Howe was obsessed with the TV show Dexter which features a serial killer . Michael C Hall who starred as Dexter in the TV show . 'He didn’t talk a lot, he’d come in, he’d do a bit of homework, he’d watch some TV, play computer games and sometimes we’d talk, but it would be inconsequential things, just little things, mainly about games. 'A couple of games he wanted to play, or the games he was looking to play. 'I think that him being as quiet as he was, made her so much more protective of him.' As time went on, the couple grew concerned that the now 13-year-old Mark was spending more time in his bedroom playing computer games and withdrawing not only from his friends, but his family too. 'Tina was a little worried because he seemed to be getting quieter in himself, she talked with me about it and she spoke to some of her friends from work, and they were saying he’s a teenager,' said Kris. 'He was just an average teenager. Sometimes he'd be "yeah, whatever I'm not interested, I don't want nothing to do with it" and other times he’d be "yeah okay, let’s go to the cinema". 'Sometimes he’d be chatty and sometimes he’d just stay in his room play on the computer. 'The reason it always sticks into mind so much, was how much more Mark was talking in the game room, compared to how he’d talk actually off line. 'He was more happy to talk online than off. Kris said Mark became increasingly obsessed with violent games and while he and his wife were watching television, they would hear Mark yelling at his games console. He said by 2010, Mark was becoming even more withdrawn. Kris and Tina married in 2011 and planned a long life together . 'It was still Mark but he it was like he was just going through a really a rough patch, emotionally. 'He was withdrawing more into the world where he doesn’t have to physically face people than the world where he’s got to face people.' He said the couple became encouraged when Mark got a job in a care home, however when he returned home, he would go straight to his video games. 'He’d go out to work, was paying his own way with things and he’d come back in from work and he’d bought a load more games, changing his phone regularly, just doing his own thing totally and basically just shut us out,' said Kris. Kris said when Tina smiled, the room would light up . 'It was like having a total stranger living in the house. And if we saw him, or spoke with him, if we bumped into each other in the kitchen or we had to stand outside his door saying "look, we need the bloody plates out, you’ve got every plate in the house" he'd be really rebellious.' Kris said they became concerned about Mark and although he hated his mother interfering, she felt she had to try. 'We took him down the doctors, but he didn’t really want to talk,' said Kris. Kris said in September 2011 he asked Tina to marry him, and to help mark feel more included, asked him to be best man. 'I wanted to prove to him that he was family and at that point said to him "go on, do us a favour" and he was like "oh wow". Happier times: Tina strikes a pose for the camera . 'I said it’ll be nice my son giving me my wife. And he was so up for it.' Kris said he and Tina had a perfect day. 'It was brilliant - I wasn’t actually walking on the floor, I was walking inches above it,' he said. 'It was just amazing and seeing Mark hug his mum. Everyone was hugging.' However, Kris said although the wedding day was a happy occasion, Mark was getting worse as he started to smoke cannabis which would would push him further into a dark world. Tina was 'devoted' to her children, said Kris . 'Mark had got to the point where he’s bringing it in and the house stunk of it.' Kris said Tina challenged Mark about the drugs, but he would shout back. Unknown to the couple, Mark was secretly sending his friends text messages saying how much he hated his mother and began stabbing the punch bag in his bedroom while also becoming obsessed with the TV show Dexter, which is about a serial killer. 'He was a fanatic for the programme. I mean, Dexter is a serial killer.' What the couple didn't know was that Mark began using the internet to search for the weapons Dexter used to kill his victims. On the 16 July 2012, Kris, 51, was working away from home when he received a frantic text from a family member saying that Mark had confessed to his sister that he had killed his mother. 'I tried Tina on the mobile and she didn’t answer, it just ended up ringing off, so I tried her on the land line and it was just the same. I kept kept ringing her and ringing her.' Desperate to know that his wife was safe, he asked his father, Brian, to go round to the flat where he found Tina lying in a pool of blood while still on the phone to his son. US TV series Dexter features a fictional police worker, Dexter Morgan, a blood spatter pattern analyst for the Miami Police Department, who leads a secret life hunting down and killing criminals he believes deserve retribution. Orphaned at the age of three, Dexter was and adopted by a Miami police officer who recognised he had homicidal tendencies . He was then taught to channel his passion for human dissection into killing only heinous criminals. 'From the amount of blood and that, I could tell she’d gone,' said Brian. Kris said: 'He’s saying he’s so sorry. My dad’s ex ambulance and when he said that, I knew. I didn’t want to carry on. I just wanted the world to stop. It had stopped.  Why? She didn’t have a bad word for anybody at any time.' Inside the flat, police discovered just how frenzied the killing was and it was established that Tina had been stabbed 53 times. Mark was arrested at the care home where he worked and blamed his step father, although the story was quickly discounted by detectives who had taken Kris into the police station for questioning. Kris said: 'That night I just lay there. I don't know if I slept, I don't know if I didn't. 'In the morning I walked home and there is this big white tent in front of the garden, with police there. I just sank down on my knees. I was just praying - praying it was all just a horrible dream, that it was somebody else’s.' Kris said he was hoping that Mark's trial in January 2014 would provide some answers as to why he killed his mother, although he said he was left bitterly disappointed. 'They brought him up and he just stood there and looked like he just didn’t give a damn. I wanted to see if there was something that was totally different to what I was expecting. I didn’t want to see Mark I wanted to see a demon. And all I saw was Mark, and he didn't care.' Mark Howe pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life with a minimum of 21 years and six months. Kris says he is now focusing on rebuilding his life by fulfilling his and Tina's dreams. Kris says Tina always wanted to visit Cambodia so he has scattered some of her ashes there . 'Tina had seen a picture of a place in Cambodia, called Bayon temple, part of the Angkor Wat region in Siem Reap,' he added. 'She always said she wanted to go there and I am like, "we’re going, you wanted to go we’re going". 'And all those plans. They just went up in flames. But I went to Cambodia and found the spot that we’d looked at in that picture and the tree looked just the same. 'I took some of Tina’s ashes and I spread them round the tree. The tree, that will be Tina, giving herself again. While the tree's there, Tina’s there.'
target: Mark Howe, 21, researched what weapons his TV icon used on victims .
  Sent text messages to friends saying how much he hated mum Tina .
  The 48-year-old tackled him over cannabis use at family home in Leicester .
  Found lying dead inside flat by her father-in-law Brian Wardle .
  Kris Wardle said he was devastated at death of his beloved wife .
  Kris Wardle and his father Brian appear on Britain's Darkest Taboos, Sunday night at 9pm on CI .