Morning:
10°c
A City banker accused of strangling his wife told jurors today how fears of a divorce drove him to secretly record her phone calls.
Neil Ellerbeck, 46, admitted using a dictaphone to check up on Kate Ellerbeck after finding “flirty” text messages on her phone.
The Old Bailey jury has heard how Mrs Ellerbeck, also 46, had an affair with tennis coach Patrick McAdam and flirted with old schoolfriend Martin Perry and chef Guiliano Vilardo.
As a result, it is claimed, Ellerbeck strangled his wife at their home in Enfield on 14 November last year.
Ellerbeck, who earned £136,600 a year as a chief investment manager with HSBC, entered the witness box and told the court he had first suspected her more than a year earlier, in late 2007.
“She was being very vague, she was being non-communicative, which started me being a little bit suspicious. I noticed she was topping up her phone a lot. I did check her phone to see who she was calling,” he said.
He tried to trap her by leaving his work dictaphone on the shelf near the phone and setting it to voice-activated record mode. Asked why, he replied: “I was getting a feeling there was lots of flirting going on but then texts started being deleted. I didn't want to confront her about it because I thought that would make things worse. I was afraid if things would develop into anything that it might ultimately cause the break-up of the family.”
Ellerbeck said he was “very sad” when he discovered that his wife was in a relationship with Mr McAdam.
Jurors have heard that on the day of her death the couple had started a row after taking their 10-year-old daughter to an entrance exam to a secondary school. Ellerbeck told police he had pinned her down after she became violent but denied strangling her.
He said she was breathing heavily and pale but alive when he left to pick up his daughter at 11.20pm to take her back to school. After buying a lottery ticket at 11.49am, he returned home and dialled 999 at 12.09pm to report finding his wife collapsed. Ellerbeck denies murder. The trial continues.
