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The desperately ill pensioner was ‘murdered’ by his wife of 50 years after he admitted to an affair on what he believed was his deathbed, a court heard.
Tony Wakeford (75) thought he was dying when he confessed to his wife Patricia that he had a fling with her best friend of 43 years, Penny.
However, Mr Wakeford recovered from his illness and returned home, and hoped that his wife could forgive him as he struggled with Parkinson’s disease.
But over the next five years her anger simmered before she finally snapped and allegedly stabbed him to death with a kitchen knife, the jury at Guildford Crown Court, Surrey, was told.
She dialled 999 in the early hours of September 4 last year, telling emergency services her husband had attacked her when she scolded him again over the fling as she peeled vegetables at their home in Norwood Road, Effingham, Surrey,
Mrs Wakeford (67) wept in the dock as the jury was told that she had murdered the love of her life, who she had been with since the age of 17.
Mr Wakeford died from a single stab wound to the heart but was also found to have knife wounds on his hands, arm and leg.
Alexia Durran, prosecuting, told jurors that the defendant’s solicitor had given a statement to police outlining her version of events.
Mrs Wakeford had said: “A song came on the radio that reminded me to remark to Tony, who was at his desk: “Why did you do it? Why did you have the affair?”
“He shouted at me: ‘Shut up’ forcefully.”
She said he then walked towards her quickly, backing her into the corner and pushing her by both her shoulders.
After regaining her balance, she claimed she picked up the black-handled Kitchen Devil knife, pointing it at him and telling him: “Don’t do that to me.”
She then pushed him, causing him to topple backwards onto the floor. A tussle then ensued, with each pushing each other’s hands.
“He began to weaken,” she said, which caused her hand and the knife to go “forwards into his chest.”
The struggle continued, with her claiming she prodded his hands and leg with the knife to release his grip, before she walked out, heading upstairs to bed.
The next she knew was when his bedroom light went on in the night and she found him lying on the floor.
She cut off his clothes as she tried to treat him, she claimed.
However, Miss Durran said that did not explain the distribution of clothing, from his jumper in the porch, his trousers in a bathroom laundry basket and other items in a bag in one of the home’s three bedrooms.
She told the jury: “You might think there was very little bloodstaining in the kitchen, where Mr Wakeford was.
“You will hear from an expert in blood distribution and that police put down a chemical in the kitchen to see if there had been any cleaning which shows up blue.
“In photos you can see where the prosecution say blood was left, looking, you might think, like a body on the ground.
“You are not seeing pools of blood on the ground because it looks like someone has cleaned up.”
Mrs Wakeford also told some of the first people to arrive at the scene that the carpets had only been laid six weeks earlier and they would have to be replaced again because of the blood.
During the three-week trial, jurors are expected to hear from medical and psychiatric experts dealing with Mr Wakeford’s degenerative condition and his wife’s mental state.
The prosecution said the victim was a passive man who had only returned home a week before he died from a spell in a care home and that he was so weak and his speech so indistinct that he was unlikely to have been able to launch the verbal and physical attack his wife claimed.
Miss Durran said: “In early 2006 Mr Wakeford was taken very ill in relation to his Parkinson’s and the medication prescribed to him.
“He spent some time in hospital. At one point it was thought he might not survive.
“He told his wife he had had an affair of some longevity with her best friend, many years earlier.
“This revelation had a devastating effect on Mrs Wakeford. She would want to know all the details and would question Mr Wakeford.
“She became distressed and violent, both verbally and physically. There were episodes of anger directed towards her husband, often accompanied by binge-drinking,” she said.
Witnesses were due to describe how, when they last saw Mr Wakeford at or near the couple’s home he was weak and shaking.
One person told police they heard Mrs Wakeford, on the afternoon before the killing, saying again and again for about 10 minutes: ‘I hate you, I hate you.’
Afterwards she told paramedics and police: “He came at me,” and “He started it.’
Miss Durran told jurors: “The prosecution says it was a calculated use of the knife in anger about the affair her husband had had and had been simmering inside her for a number of years.
“It is clearly an emotive background.
“You may well have sympathies towards Mrs Wakeford, a woman in time past cheated on by her husband and then having to look after him as he slowly deteriorated.
“But the prosecution invite you to look coldly and clinically at the evidence of their relationship, in effect since 2006, and the information about the affair emerging.”
The couple’s daughter, Sarah Lee, told the jury that as her father’s illness progressed, his physical capability, including his speech, would depend on what drug regime he was on at a particular time.
By the time he was admitted to the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford early in 2006 he had begun to hallucinate and become paranoid that he was being bugged by government agencies and that his wife had men hidden in her wardrobe. – Daily Mail