Tonight:
5°c
Husband guilty of stabbing Vodafone executive wife 30 times
30 Oct 2009An obsessive husband was convicted today of stabbing his Vodafone executive wife more than 30 times after she admitted having an affair.
Sally Sinclair, 40, who was head of business analysis with the mobile phone company, was killed in the kitchen of her £1million rented home in Amport, Hampshire.
On the same day her husband, Alisdair, was due to have responded to her divorce petition ending their 20-year marriage.
The brutal attack was partly witnessed by childen in the house who can not be named for legal reasons.
They told police later they had pleaded "nobody has to get killed" at the pair, who had both grabbbed knives in the struggle.
As she fought for her life Mrs Sinclair yelled: "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" before leaving his wife dying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor.
Sinclair, 48, was cleaared of murder but conmvicted of manslaughter by reason of diminshed responsibility today by the jury at Winchester Crown Court and will be sentenced tomorrow.
During the trial the court heard how Mrs Sinclair had been the sole breadwinner yet had no control over the family's finances and did not even have her own bank account.
Her husband was a bizarre and ultimately fatal combination of a control freak and a recluse.
He obsessively bought cars, including three of the same model, but rarely drove them.
He also bought clothes he did not wear and stockpiled possessions such as CDs - often buying several copies of the same album - and insisted chairs around the house should always remain in their plastic covers removed.
Weeks before the attack Mrs Sinclair had told her husband she wanted to leave him and get a divorce.
But he was so jealous and suspicious he could not bear to let her go, bottling up the simmering resentment and frustration until he was brought to breaking point.
Sinclair had ransacked her papers and found a hand-written note at the end of a business document on which she had written "I lust after you".
On an August afternoon last year he challenged his wife on whether she was seeing someone else and when she confirmed that she was he unleashed the savage attack using a variety of knives.
In the witness box he admitted the wounds Mrs Sinclair had received, including one that cut her carotid artery in her neck and damaged her spinal cord, were "beyond self defence".
But he insisted she had attacked him and he had felt he was dying during the incident. He said he could not remember anything after lashing out towards her neck and that she had fallen to the floor.
However, the court heard he had suffered only minor injuries to his hands during the attack.
Reader views (1)
Seems to me this man should have been in a mental asylum years before he murdered his poor wife. How she must have suffered for so many years. I hope he gets a really long sentence although with the way Britain is at the moment, he'll be out after a few years. Justice stinks and life is cheap......
- Bj, sydney Australia, 29/10/2009 21:50
Report abuse
