Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Stabbed to death after bubble and squeak row
‘Abusive’ hubby taunted wife who then killed him
THE wife who stabbed her husband and left him to die has told a murder trial the “final straw” was when he taunted her for serving bubble and squeak with steak.
Penelope Jackson knifed David Jackson three times, hours after the meal she cooked to celebrate her 66th birthday in February this year.
Their daughter had brought the steak and stayed for dinner, but David, 78, was angry about the side dish.
Jackson told a jury: “I was absolutely horrified that he was being so nasty.
“I said don’t do this again and started to cry and I went to the side and I was crying quietly. I was just inside, in bits, my whole birthday being ruined, all over bubble and squeak.”
She added: “This was the final straw because in December I had mentally said I wasn’t going to put up with it.”
Jackson told the court she took a kitchen knife and headed for her bedroom in their bungalow, intending to kill herself. But instead, she went to her husband’s bedroom to confront him. Expecting him to apologise, she said she was in “utter despair” when he was again contemptuous towards her.
Jackson told Bristol crown court she stabbed her husband after she “just lost it”. She added: “He sat up and there was blood. I was absolutely horrified. “I went out of the bedroom and knew what I had done.” She said she then wrote a confession note in the kitchen, but her husband walked back in – and goaded her for not killing him. Jackson said he told her: “You couldn’t even get that right, you’re pathetic.” She testified that her husband was on a phone call to the police when she again attacked him with a knife. “I stabbed him and he said, ‘She’s done it again’. He sort of turned and I did it again and he fell down,” the defendant added. Jackson, of Berrow, Somerset, admits manslaughter but denies murder. She says her husband, a retired lieutenant colonel, was controlling and violent. The trial continues.