Woman ‘stabs boyfriend to death after he finds her with another man’
A WOMAN stabbed her boyfriend through the heart after he arrived home to find her in a short dress and stockings about to have sex with her lover, a court heard.
Natasha Elderfield, 41, chased her partner off the boat they shared after he discovered her below deck with her lover, whose trousers were around his ankles, a jury was told yesterday.
The court heard how she flew into a rage when boyfriend Robert Dobinson interrupted her attempts to have sex with another man.
She told police officers who arrested her, ‘my God, it’s so ******g funny’, after stabbing Mr Dobinson and leaving him to die on the banks of the Thames, the jury was told.
Mr Dobinson, 33, had been dating mother-of-two Elderfield for about two years. The couple had had sex in the morning of the day he was killed, the court heard.
The court heard that Elderfield’s lover, Tony Steggles, had brought a large amount of alcohol to the boat, and a ‘sulky’ Mr Dobinson had left to spend the afternoon with a friend.
As Elderfield and Mr Steggles spent the afternoon drinking and dancing, Mr Dobinson repeatedly called his girlfriend in a jealous rage – with his constant interrup- tions making her more and more infuriated. At one point, she became so enraged that she called the police, telling the 999 operator ‘he’s had his ******g due, I’m not having this any more’.
The court heard how, within ten minutes of that phone call, bloodsoaked Mr Dobinson was staggering desperately along the bank of the river, yelling ‘ help me, I’ve been stabbed’.
Describing the afternoon the two lovers spent on the boat, prosecutor Charles Ward- Jackson told the court: ‘Natasha Elderfield had on a short dress and for a while she also had on stockings and they were getting affectionate and were on the point of having sexual contact.
‘She had spent a very pleasurable evening with her new lover Mr Steggles – drinking, dancing, the promise of sex – and it was being interrupted by her very irritating ex-partner and she was fed up of it.
‘That is the background against which Mr Dobinson arrived.’
After storming back to the boat, moored where the couple lived in Abingdon, Oxon., Mr Dobinson went below deck to find his girlfriend and her lover in a tryst.
Mr Ward- Jackson told the jury: ‘It is likely that Mr Dobinson knew or suspected about this affair and not surprisingly resented it.
‘Within a short space of time Mr Dobinson arrived on the boat. Natasha Elderfield and Mr Steggles were down in the cabin and were about to have sex.
‘He had his trousers down when Mr Dobinson came down into the cabin and his arrival must have been extremely unwelcome.’
‘It is likely he knew about the affair’
The court heard a fight broke out, with Elderfield throwing crockery at Mr Dobinson’s head and he in turn hitting her over the head with a fire extinguisher.
The jury heard she then chased him out of the cabin armed with an 4.5in kitchen knife and stabbed him through the heart.
‘She returned to the boat, still holding the knife in an overhand grip, and told Mr Steggles: ‘I’ve stabbed the bastard.’
Elderfield, who told police that Mr Dobinson had accidentally walked on to the knife during a heated argument, denies murder.
The trial continues.