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A City banker accused of strangling his wife told his daughter "mummy's gone shopping" when he picked her up from school after the couple had a 50-minute physical struggle, an Old Bailey jury heard today.
Neil Ellerbeck, 46, claimed he had left wife Kate alive following the fight. He said he had texted his mistress and bought a Lottery ticket before returning home to find her dead.
He said: "I saw Kate was lying across the hallway at the bottom of the stairs," he told the court. "I was not sure what to do. I was not expecting to see her lying there. I said from the doorway: 'Are you OK?' There was no movement so I quickly made towards her and gave her a couple of shakes. I rolled her over shouting 'Are you OK?' It didn't look good. I phoned 999."
Ellerbeck also described the prolonged struggle with his wife and how he had shoved her and struck her on the chin with the heel of his hand.
But he insisted she had been "vicious" and he had only acted in self-defence to calm her, never intending to kill or even hurt her.
Asked by defence counsel Diana Ellis QC: "Did you intend to kill your wife?", Ellerbeck said: "Absolutely not, no."
Ms Ellis: "Did you intend that she should be really seriously injured?" Ellerbeck: "No."
Ms Ellis: "Did you have any idea of the injuries she had suffered to the inside of her neck?" Ellerbeck: "I would not have left her if she had been in distress."
Ellerbeck also claimed that he had lied to police after his arrest to protect his children.
He told detectives he knew nothing of any affair she was having and was not in any other relationship himself.
Yet the jury has heard how he had been having an affair for two years with Julie Ring and, having bugged more than 120 hours of his wife's phone calls, knew full well she was seeing their children's tennis coach. In the witness box today Ellerbeck, whose children were aged 13 and 10, admitted that he had made a mistake.
"I didn't feel proud of what I had done but largely I felt I didn't want the children to know that mum had been having affairs, that dad had had an affair and we had had fights," he said.
"I wanted to avoid the children finding out, which was a mistake."
Under cross examination by Edward Brown QC, prosecuting, he said he accepted his wife's affairs as he was in a extramarital relationship himself. He was not a jealous man, he said.
Ellerbeck has pleaded not guilty to killing Kate, 46, in their Enfield home last November, allegedly in fear that a divorce would cost him half his fortune accrued as a senior banker with HSBC.
Questioned by Ms Ellis, Ellerbeck said his wife had flown at him, lashing out during a row after dropping their daughter off for a school exam. He said: "She was very, very vicious. She was aiming at my face, she was lashing out towards my face. I just wanted to pin her down and calm her."
Ellerbeck said there were three physical clashes both upstairs and downstairs which involved him trying to constrain her in a bear hug and then lie on top of her to force her to stop the attacks.
"At one point she bit my thumb, which hurt, and I used the heel of my hand to give her a good shove which connected with her chin," he went on.
Finally Ellerbeck said he pointed out that their daughter needed to be picked up from school. His wife was looking at her injuries in the mirror and gestured as if to say "like this?" and refused to come with him, he said.
When he collected his daughter he told her "mummy has gone shopping".
The trial continues.
