Oct. 17, 1967: Husband killed with his own police revolver
Brenda Gunning, the wife of a city police officer, was charged with murder after her husband was shot with his own police revolver.
Michael Gunning, 30, died of a single bullet fired in the couple’s home.
The Gunnings met and married in 1957 in North Wales where Michael Gunning was a Cheshire police officer. Brenda Gunning, 34, said her husband was a heavy drinker and abusive. They separated twice before reuniting and coming to Canada. They had three children aged 18 months, three years and seven years, who, court heard, were regularly fed by neighbours.
Brenda Gunning said the family lived on $20 to $30 a week which had to cover groceries, cigarettes, utilities and clothes for herself and the children. When their house was searched the day of the shooting, only some milk, oranges, bits of food and cornflakes were found.
The afternoon that Michael Gunning was killed, he came home cursing and swearing after drinking with friends at the Royal George Hotel, his wife said. He arrived late and she was agitated because she had been waiting for him so they could go grocery shopping.
He kept telling her to “Shut up woman” and she said she saw something black in his hands.
“I hit him three times,” she testified. “On the third time, I heard a noise.” Her husband fell down and “everything was so quiet. I didn’t hear anything.”
Gunning said she went into another room and came back to see her husband lying on the floor and told him to stop fooling and get up. When he didn’t, she bent down to touch his back and saw blood on the hem of her skirt when she stood up.
She went to the phone and realized she had a gun in her hand.
Michael Gunning had been shot from a distance of 23 centimetres or less.
Dr. Keith Yonge, director of the University of Alberta psychiatry department and head of the University Hospital psychiatry unit, who testified at Gunning’s trial in June 1968, said he believed she was suffering from a mental disorder at the time of the shooting.
Gunning had been treated for mental illness, which had grown worse after the birth of their third child.
Brenda Gunning cried a loud in relief after a jury found her not guilty of murder by reason of insanity. It took the all-male jury an hour and 40 minutes to reach their decision.
A year after the shooting, Gunning was released from Alberta Hospital on the condition she return to her family in Wales. She left four days later to be reunited with her children, who had been in her parents’ care.