A LAWYER told a jury yesterday how his wife’s taunt that she could not live with a cripple “burned in his mind” as he picked up a kitchen knife and stabbed her to death.
Christopher Lumsden, 52, broke down and wept in the witness box as he described the death of his aged mother and then how a consultant told him that he had the muscleweakening condition muscular dystrophy. But the prosecution accused him of being dry-eyed as he recounted the death of his wife, Alison, five days after she had confessed to an affair with Roger Flint, a family friend, and said that she wanted to leave.
Lumsden said that he had sat vacantly watching the television in an empty house “sinking into greater and greater despair”. He vaguely recalled going to bed but admitted: “My memory and the remainder of the events is patchy, almost surreal.”
When his wife, who slept in a separate bedroom, returned to the couple’s £1.25 million home in Altrincham, Cheshire, she went into his room to thank him for switching on her electric blanket.
She sat down at the dressing table with her back turned. He said: “I have a blank and then I found myself getting out of bed with the word ‘cripple’ burning in my brain.
Advertisement
“I grabbed the knife out of the drawer and walked around the bed and came up behind her.
“She saw me and started to stand and turn. Then I brought the knife down. Everything went black.”
The jury at Manchester Crown Court has been told that Mrs Lumsden was stabbed so many times in the back, face and neck that a pathologist could not count the number of blows.
Lumsden, a financial specialist with the firm Pinsent Masons, based in Manchester, was asked by Peter Birkett, QC, for the defence: “You accept that you killed your wife?” There was a pause before he whispered: “Yes, I do.”
Lumsden admits killing his wife on March 16 last year but denies murder, claiming that he was suffering from an abnormality of mind at the time. The jury must decide whether he is guilty of manslaughter or murder.
Advertisement
His children, Thomas, 20, and Kate, 17, watched their father give evidence.
The lawyer described how, for several decades, he and his wife had built a “wonderful” life together, and a circle of friends based around the tennis club. But she became “hypercritical” after she went through the menopause and in 2002 moved into the spare bedroom.
In 2004 Lumsden was told that he had muscular dystrophy and was given as little as three years to live.
Charles Chruszcz, QC, for the prosecution, suggested that Lumsden gave different versions of the killing. He had admitted taking the knife upstairs from the kitchen and that at one time he had a “volcanic and uncontrollable temper”. “I believe I broke,” Lumsden said.
The trial continues.