A MAN has been jailed for life for murdering a Petersfield man whose body was discovered in woodland months after he disappeared on a night out. Malcolm Carter murdered Danny Matthews, of Chapel Street, Petersfield, at Carter's Rival Lodge Farm home in West Harting, West Sussex, on the night of June 3 last year. Carter, 43, stabbed builder Mr Matthews in the base of the neck with an eight-inch hunting knife after an altercation between the pair. Carter then took the body of the 29 year old and buried it in woodland at Inholm Wood, near Chichester, West Sussex. Mr Matthews' body lay hidden until September 2006 when Carter led police to the woods and showed them where it was lying. He later admitted murdering him. Carter also pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice after he, along with housemate Graham Palfrey, 47, Keith Sims, 51, from Portsmouth, and Mark McGaughey, 24, from Bordon, hatched an elaborate plot to hide the killing from police. Carter, Palfrey, Sims and McGaughey meticulously cleaned the bungalow and burned the green sofa on which Mr Matthews was sitting in a bid to hide all evidence of the killing. The group also removed Mr Matthews' jewellery and mobile phone and disposed of them. Palfrey's girlfriend, 32-year-old Kirsty Harper, of Glenthorne Meadow, Petersfield, also pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice after she went along with the plot. A hushed Winchester Crown Court heard Judge Michael Broderick sentence the gang. Carter nodded his head as he was handed a life sentence and told that he would serve a minimum of 16 years. Judge Broderick said: "Precisely what triggered the offence will remain a mystery." Palfrey, who had also admitted perverting the course of justice at an earlier hearing, was jailed for five years. Sims and McGaughey denied perverting the course of justice but were found guilty by playing a part in the conspiracy to cover up the killing. Sims was jailed for 21 months and McGaughey for 15 months. Harper was handed a nine-month sentence, suspended for 18 months, and 200 hours of unpaid work. During the trial of Sims and McGaughey, the court heard that Sims, Carter, Mr Matthews and Palfrey had been drinking in the Market Inn, Petersfield, earlier on the night of June 3. Palfrey got into a "minor fracas" with another group of people in the pub and the two rival groups agreed to meet later for a fight. Prosecuting, Michael Parroy QC told the court that just after midnight, Carter, Palfrey, Sims, Mr Matthews and Peter Farrell, who has since died, left the pub in Palfrey's silver Jeep Cherokee car to meet the other men. When the other group failed to turn up the men got back in the jeep and drove back to Rival Lodge Farm. There, Sims went to sleep in his lorry, which was parked in the yard, and the other men went inside the house. Once inside the house an argument broke out between Carter and Mr Matthews. Carter then got up, walked to his room and returned with the knife. Mr Parroy told the court: "Without warning he went up to Danny Matthews and plunged the knife into the left-hand side of the base of his neck. He killed him outright. "He then went up to Graham Palfrey and said, 'I did it for you.' Then he kissed Graham Palfrey on the head. "After the killing, Graham Palfrey instigated a conspiracy to conceal what had taken place. "Keith Sims certainly played a part in that conspiracy. "Mark McGaughey did odd jobs for Graham Palfrey. He was seen by Peter Farrell to take a part in the clean-up operation. "This was an astonishingly thorough process and Mark McGaughey worked to hide any evidence that might have been found by police officers." The morning after the killing, Palfrey and Farrell went to see Harper, who went along with the story that the pair had not even returned to Rival Lodge Farm the previous night. Farrell later told police what happened in return for immunity from prosecution, but died of a heart attack before the case went to court. The court also heard evidence from McGaughey in which he claimed that he found out about the killing but failed to tell police because he feared for his own life. McGaughey said that he went to Rival Lodge Farm on Monday, June 5, and was asked to clean the inside of the silver Jeep Cherokee which had been used to take Mr Matthews' body away. He told the court that when he first arrived at the farm he smelt a strong smell of bleach and confronted Carter about what had happened. He said: "I just noticed a strong smell of bleach and I also noticed that one of the chairs was missing. "I went up to Carter and said 'who have you rubbed out then?' He said, 'you're not stupid are you, Mark?' "I asked him who he had killed and he said, 'Danny.' "I didn't want anything to do with it but I wasn't going to go lurching off because for all I knew I could be next." McGaughey said that he was then asked to clean the fireplace of the house. But he denied that he cleaned it in a bid to remove forensic evidence of the killing. He added: "I can't deny that I may have cleaned some forensic evidence but I was not intentionally at any time trying to clean off forensic evidence." In a statement read to the court, Daniel Matthews' mother, Ginny Matthews, said: "Each day when I wake up, for a nano-second everything is calm. "Then I realise that something is missing and I spend the rest of my working hours carrying a lump of lead around inside me. "My nights are disturbed by frequent panic attacks. I had five children and now I have four. "When we were told Dan was dead but there was no body, I was aghast. I felt totally bleak, with a feeling of overwhelming and endless sorrow which is with me to this day. "This is a grinding and relentless pain which is more like a physical condition than a 'mere feeling'. "Discovering the manner of his death and the way he was treated afterwards was mind numbingly awful. "This man had choices, he knew what he had done, and had he had a shred of humanity, he could have chosen to call an ambulance after stabbing Daniel, he could have given himself up to police. "Instead he chose to hide every trace of his crime. His actions must have taken a great deal of calculation, determination and detachment. "Dan watched over his sisters, he was very protective of Mel and was keen to guide her. "The murder of the person she loved more than anything else in the world has left her a very different person to the person she once was."