A retired UK factory worker who admitted to strangling his wife a few days after the first national confinement against the coronavirus was found not guilty of the murder.
Anthony Williams, 70, told police in Wales that he “literally stifled the life” of his 46-year-old wife, Ruth, at his home in Cwmbran on 28 March, five days after the blockade across the UK that the left “depressed” the Independent reported.
Williams told detectives that he killed his 67-year-old wife after “freaking out” during an argument. He had retired from his job as a factory worker 18 months earlier and was not handling the consequences well, according to the report.
“I’m sorry, I just blew up,” he told police at the scene. “I am really sorry.”
Williams strangled his wife with a bathrobe cord, according to Sun, who also noted that the terrible attack was the first reported lockdown murder. Prosecutors said he went to a neighbor’s house after the murder and confessed.
“She is dead, I killed her – we argued and I strangled her,” Williams reportedly told an operator. “You have to come immediately.”
Responding officers found Ruth Williams on the couple’s porch while holding a set of keys. She was later pronounced dead in a hospital, where doctors found hemorrhage in her eyes, face and mouth, as well as five neck fractures, Sun reported.
During the trial, jurors heard recordings of Williams insisting to the police that his wife’s death “was not murder”, claiming that he “had no intention” of killing her.
“I just pirated, it wasn’t me,” Williams told officers, according to Sun. “I wouldn’t hurt a fly, it wasn’t me, I’m not like that and I don’t know what came over me.”
A Swansea Crown court jury unanimously cleared Williams of the murder on Monday.
A psychologist testified that Williams’s anxiety and depression were “intensified” by the strict COVID-19 blockade and affected his ability to control his actions, the Independent reported.
Williams’ former job was “one of his main coping mechanisms” for his “neurotic disposition,” psychologist Alison Witts told the court.
But a second psychologist told jurors that Williams had no “psychiatric” defense to the murder, saying he had no history of depression.
“[Williams] I knew what I was doing at the time, ”psychologist Damian Gamble told the court.
The couple’s daughter, for her part, said she feared that her father was “losing control” months earlier, saying she thought the couple would lose their home despite having no mortgage and more than $ 205,000 in savings, the company said. BBC.
The father, who had already pleaded guilty to manslaughter on grounds of diminished liability, will be convicted by a judge on Thursday on the smallest charge.