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Vodafone woman 'stabbed by husbad after admitting affair'
13 Oct 2009A Vodafone executive was stabbed more than 30 times by her jealous husband in a frenzied attack part witnessed by children because she had told him she was seeing someone else, a court heard today.
Sally Sinclair, 40, was head of business analysis with the mobile phone company when she finally admitted the affair to her husband Alisdair.
The marriage between the pair has been strained for months over Sinclair's, "controlling and reclusive behaviour" which had left Mrs Sinclair with no bank account of her own, despite being the breadwinner.
The jury at Winchester Crown Court heard he flew into a jealous rage at the news and attacked her with several knives in the kitchen of the luxury detached home they rented in Amport, Hampshire.
On the day of the alleged murder, August 16 last year, Sinclair, 48, was supposed to have responded to a divorce petition from his wife of more than 20 years.
The attack was part-witnessed by children, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
One child told police they saw Sinclair stab his wife several times.
During the argument she admitted seeing someone else, to which Sinclair said: "But you said you were a lesbian," and she replied: "I didn't mean that."
Christopher Parker QC, prosecuting, said that Sinclair had also become suspicious of his wife when she had said the marriage was over a few weeks before.
He had looked through her things and found a handwritten note from his wife at the end of a business document which read: "I lust after you," and he had been upset.
Another child who saw the attack had shouted: "Nobody has to get killed," at the pair, who were both seen brandishing knives at each other.
The businesswoman was heard later to say as the attack continued: "Alisdair, please do not do this. I will stop all this happening. Please do not do it."
Sinclair replied: "It's too late for that now," the jury was told.
House-husband Sinclair, formerly from Georgia Lane, Amport, denies the murder of his wife.
Mrs Sinclair had been with Vodafone since 1994 and worked at the firm's headquarters in Newbury, Berkshire.
Mr Parker told the jury: "Sally Sinclair wished to leave her husband. He could not bear to let her go. He had some simmering resentment and frustrations together with some suspicions that brought him to breaking point.
"They had been bickering and quarrelling for weeks, if not months, but that afternoon they had one final argument and for the first time in their relationship he was violent. He attacked her and stabbed her and cut her so she died on their kitchen floor. He used a variety of knives."
Mr Parker told the jury that Sinclair had told police it was self-defence as his wife had attacked him.
But the barrister told the court: "This had nothing to do with lawful self-defence. The evidence shows a sustained, ferocious and utterly one-sided assault upon his wife, who was terrified.
"He was enraged and deaf and blind to all reason and entreaties by his wife.
"This was never a case of a man defending himself. It was a man in a jealous rage who could not and would not let go."
Mr Parker said the couple had met when Mrs Sinclair was at school completing A-levels and they had then married when she had left.
They had first lived in Chepstow but in the years before the alleged murder Sinclair's behaviour had become unusual.
"To his wife's family and mutual friends he appeared to be increasingly controlling and insensitive," the barrister said.
He told the jury that Sinclair had rows with the neighbours and bought high-performance cars and bikes but did not drive them for fear of damaging them.
He became increasingly tidy and reclusive and Mr Parker said: "Although Sally Sinclair was the breadwinner she had no control over the finances. She had no bank account until shortly before she died."
The court heard the couple had moved into the rented property in Amport in 2008 and many boxes were still unpacked in the house when police searched it.
Sinclair had turned himself over to police at Basingstoke police station and he told the desk sergeant he had killed his wife.
Police went to the house and broke in to find Mrs Sinclair face down on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood with knives strewn around.
A post-mortem examination found more than 30 stabs wounds across her body including a "gaping slash" on her neck which the pathologist said had been caused by someone sawing into it, not slashing.
Mrs Sinclair had also been beaten, and suffered broken ribs.
When Sinclair was arrested he was also injured, and taken to hospital for treatment to stab wounds, but Mr Parker claimed to the jury these were minor and could have been self-inflicted.
Mr Parker also told the jury that as Sinclair's suspicions grew over another man, he began to notice things.
"Shortly after he found the note on August 13, Sally Sinclair went away on a business trip and the defendant, whose antennae was finely tuned, noticed she had new underwear and his suspicions began to simmer."
