Former newspaper editor jailed for killing his wife with hammer

A British newspaper editor has been found guilty in Dubai of killing his wife with a hammer and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Francis Matthew had faced the possibility of the death penalty for the killing.

The former editor of the English-language Gulf News, who is in his early sixties, killed his wife in Dubai with a hammer on 4 July last year.

Jane Matthew, 62, was found dead in bed at their marital home in Dubai with a severe head wound.

Herhusbandwasnotpresent in the Dubai Court of the First Instance for the verdict read by Judge Fahad al-shamsi, which is common in courts in the United Arab Emirates.

A brother of Matthew’s wife, the late 62-year-old Jane Matthew, was in court for the verdict, but declined to immediately talk to reporters.

Matthew’s lawyer could not be reached. The convicted former editor can appeal against his sentence.

Dubai police said they were called to Matthew’s threebedroom villa in the Jumeirah neighbourhood on 4 July.

They reportedly found the body of his wife of more than 30 years. The editor told them robbers had broken into the home and killed her.

During a later interrogation, police said Matthew told them his wife had grown angry with him because they were in debt and needed to move.

Matthew said he got angry when his wife called him a “loser” and told him “you should provide financially”, according to police.

Matthew told police his wife pushed him during the argument. He then got a hammer, followed her into the bedroom and struck her twice in the head, killing her.

The next morning, Matthew tried to make it look like the house had been robbed and later went to work like nothing had happened, throwing the hammer in a nearby rubbish bin, police said. Gulf News had previously said Matthew served as its editor from 1995 to 2005 and then became an editor-at-large at the newspaper.

He was still with the newspaper at the time of the killing, though the Gulf News now refers to him as a former employee.

The victim’s family said Matthew took the hammer from the kitchen and carried it down two corridors to the bedroom.

They said they believed “justice has not yet been done” after his sentence was announced.

“There was time for him to consider his actions,” a family statement said. “Instead he delivered two hammer blows to the front of Jane’s head. He made no attempt to call an ambulance afterwards.

“Jane was a loving wife, mother, daughter, sister and aunt. Losing her in such a brutal manner has left the family both bewildered and shocked.”