Ex-Durban wife killer pins blame on sex jibes
DURBAN-BORN David Clark argued that a lesbian tryst, and constant badgering about his small penis, drove him to murder, but it was not enough to save him from a life behind bars in an English jail.
On Thursday, Clark was jailed for life at the Birmingham Crown Court, for killing his wife Melanie – also born in Durban – on New Year’s Eve.
The 44-year-old estate agent told jurors he could not remember stabbing his wife in the chest at their home in Stoke Prior, near Bromsgrove, Worcestershire.
He had argued that he had suffered “a loss of control” because his wife had “nearly always” belittled him about the size of his penis.
He had wanted to be found guilty of the lesser offence of manslaughter. There was another reason why Clark flew into a rage that night, he told the court.
The two of them had began arguing about Melanie’s lesbian tryst with friend Katie Bastians, 30, which had happened in the couple’s marital bed, just two days earlier.
Melanie, Clark said, had that night bragged about seeing Katie in her sexy underwear.
This argument began after a heavy night of drinking.
The couple had spent New Year’s Eve at a friend’s house downing whisky shots while playing a drinking version of the board game, Snakes and Ladders.
Clark, in a drunken rage, stabbed his wife with a chef’s knife in the chest, in her bedroom after she told him to leave.
Soon after stabbing his wife, Clark dialled the emergency services and said to the operator: “I am sorry, I have killed my wife.”
He told the operator: “I can’t believe I f ***** g did it. I am f ***** g devastated, I don’t know why I did it.”
Police arrived at the house minutes later to find David in pyjamas soaked in blood. He asked one of the officers to kill him.
Melanie was pronounced dead 12 minutes into the new year.
Media reported that moments later her two sons, Sheldon, 22, and Slade, 19, arrived home from a party to find the police at the home and their mother dead.
The court also heard during the trial that the couple had been married for 10 years but had a turbulent relationship and had engaged in extramarital affairs.
There was even a contract that Clark signed giving Melanie permission to sleep with other people.
But the jury rejected Clark’s account and during sentencing, Justice Morris told the accused that: “Melanie Clark was a healthy woman in the prime of her life. She was subjected to a brutal attack, which came without warning.
“She offered no resistance and she had not been violent towards him,” the judge said.
Her son, Sheldon, had read a victim impact statement in which he said he was now suffering anxiety and depression after his mother’s murder.
“We were very close and had a loving relationship. I can’t see any sort of future, I can’t see a way out, and sometimes I wish I wasn’t even alive.”