Cleared of murder, husband who stabbed nagging wife
A HENPECKED husband who stabbed his common-law wife of 30 years to death because of her non-stop nagging has been cleared of murder.
Long-suffering Dennis Long snapped after vicious-tongued Judith Scott unleashed a verbal tirade branding him a “pansy” and telling him he should “wear a dress”.
The 62-year-old grandmother was stabbed three times with a kitchen knife by 59-year-old Long during a blazing row in March this year.
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When emergency services arrived at the couple’s home the knife was still sticking in the dead woman’s chest. After his arrest Long told officers the mother of two was an “evil monster”.
A jury at Newcastle Crown Court yesterday cleared Long of murder but found him guilty of manslaughter by reason of provocation. He was jailed for four years and eight months.
During his trial the former plumber highlighted a catalogue of physical and mental abuse at the hands of Ms Scott but told the jury: “I loved that woman”.
He said Ms Scott would lash out at him during frequent rows, hitting him with her fists, hurling ornaments, and would regularly attack him with a poker. His ordeal was described as “30 years of hell”.
Long said on the night of the killing he had been abused in the street by a man as he and Ms Scott walked home from a local pub in North Shields, North Tyneside. He said that once home Ms Scott started goading him. “She said I was weak, a pansy, a puff, she said she should wear the trousers and I should wear a dress. She kept going on saying I was weak.
“It went on all night. I just said leave it. I felt humiliated. She made me feel weak. She would put on a superior tone, like a domineering commanding tone. It would be brutal.
“I remember looking at the knife, I remember seeing the knife but between that and standing in front of her I don’t know. The next thing I remember is standing in the kitchen and then the cloud lifted, a realisation dawned what I had done.”
Asked how he felt when he realised he had killed Ms Scott, he said: “Devastated, the realisation, I couldn’t believe it. I destroyed everybody, I destroyed her, myself, the children, just devastated.”
Ms Scott’s daughter, Kerry Scott, told jurors she had frequently seen her mother being nasty to her stepfather.
She said: “I couldn’t believe the man I know and who brought me up would resort to such extreme violence. It was totally out of character.”
