A killer who stabbed a complete stranger to death after intervening in a lover’s tiff outside a New Years Eve party was jailed for at least 26 years today.

Mark Parrish, 37, happened to be walking past as Dagenham couple Christopher Taylor, 25, rowed with partner Jamie Girvan in the street in Harold Hill, Essex.

He shouted: “Get your hands off her” and then plunged a knife eight times into Taylor’s chest, back and side in the early hours of January 1, 2004.

Mr Taylor’s uncle Barry Edwards was also stabbed three times after he tried to fight Parrish off with a beer bottle.

The Old Bailey heard Parrish had become engaged to his own girlfriend earlier the same night but lost his temper when the night “turned sour”.

But there was no scientific evidence linking him to the crime and he was only charged last year after four former girlfriends told police he had confessed.

Parrish, who has since married and had two children, was convicted of murder and attempted murder by a jury after a two-week trial.