I gripped wife’s throat for 20 seconds then went for a fag
AN ex-Royal Marine accused of murdering his wife told jurors yesterday he accidentally killed her in self-defence after she stabbed him.
Stephen Searle, 64, said he put his hand round 62-year-old Anne’s neck for 20-25 seconds.
He admitted in court he was trained to kill, but said he did not realise his wife was dead.
Ex-UKIP councillor Searle added: “Eventually she stopped struggling and I said thank ‘f ’ for that. I said, ‘I am going to have a fag’. She didn’t reply.”
Searle is accused of using a choke hold he learned in the Marines to deliberately suffocate his wife of 45 years.
The couple, who had been drinking heavily, had a row after Anne found out he had a fling with his son’s long-term partner, Anastasia Pomiateeva, 39.
Father-of-three Searle reacted after she stabbed him in the belly with a steak knife at their home in Stowmarket, Suffolk.
He told Ipswich crown court: “I felt a stinging. I looked down and I saw a blade going backwards and forwards.
“It was in Anne’s hand. She was stabbing me. I tried to grab it and she pulled her arm away. There was a lot of noise, shouting and hollering, and I was pleading with her to give me the knife.
“We both stumbled. She fell backwards and I fell forwards. It was such madness.”
He later went back into the house and “realised things were certainly not right”.
He said: “She was a sort of grey colour. I held her hand and she was just limp. She was not warm. I had seen bodies before and I thought, ‘She’s gone’.”
Jurors were earlier played the 999 call he made around an hour after the killing. Searle told the call handler: “I have just killed my wife... Suffocation .... bit of a bizarre situation.”
The trial continues.
Marine husband denies murder with choke hold