I never intended to murder my husband, weeps ‘perfect’ wife

Mum of three ‘trying to escape aggressive partner’

A WIFE ‘obsessed’ with perfection has denied attempting to kill her husband with a bread knife after the stress of their marriage became too much.

Grace Fullerton told a court she was trying to escape her ‘aggressive’ partner during a row after he kept trying to get behind the wheel of his car while drunk.

She said she had started locking the doors of the family home and hiding the keys, including the ones to his car, in a heart-shaped box on her dressing table when he had had a drink.

The 61-year-old said her husband, Iain, had even climbed through the windows twice in order to get outside after hitting the bottle.

Fullerton said she finally ‘had enough’ on June 14 last year when he returned from work drunk.

After finding vodka hidden in his car she decided to take her own life, the High Court in Aberdeen heard.

The mother of three claims she tidied the house before taking a knife from the kitchen and writing a goodbye note to her family – later found by police on a counter top. She planned to go into woods near their home in an upmarket Aberdeen suburb to end her life, the court heard.

But while at the sink with the knife in her hand she caught a reflection of her husband in the window, she told the jury.

Fullerton claimed he demanded the keys then grabbed her and a struggle ensued – with the knife still in her grip. He was taken to hospital with 15 knife cuts.

The jury was shown pictures of the blood-spattered kitchen and conservatory.

Taking the stand on the third day of the trial, a tearful Fullerton said she had been finding it harder to deal with her husband.

‘I found I wasn’t keeping up with my day-to-day activities,’ she said. ‘I found I became obsessed with having everything perfect in the house.

‘I had decided what I needed to do when he came home drunk earlier that day. I finished the cleaning and wrote the note. I picked up a knife and was looking out the window and I could see Iain’s reflection in the glass.

‘He had that stance he always had when he was going to be aggressive.’

She told the court: ‘I had no intention of murdering Iain. I had no intention of hurting Iain at all. I practically forgot I had the knife in my hand. I was hitting him not stabbing him.’

After advocate depute Owen Mullan put it to Fullerton she had a ‘violent temper’ and deliberately attacked him with the knife, she replied: ‘It was a struggle. A terrible, horrible struggle. They were hit wounds, not stab wounds. My only concern was to get out of the house.’

Fullerton was acquitted of threatening and abusive behaviour and assault charges going back to 1992 at the close of the Crown case yesterday.

She denies attempted murder and has lodged a special defence of self-defence and being of unsound mind at the time of the incident.

The trial continues.