Spoiled, abusive and insatiable
Judge’s verdict as sex-mad church treasurer gets 17 years for murdering wife who spurned advances
A SEX-obsessed church treasurer murdered his wife in an 84mph motorway crash after his ‘insatiable’ bedroom demands led to her asking for a divorce.
Ian Walters was described by a judge as a ‘spoiled child’ and a ‘narcissistic, self-centred, self-absorbed bully’ who would become ‘abusive’ if his partner Tracy refused sex.
Yesterday he was ordered to serve at least 17 years in prison after a jury ruled he had deliberately veered off the M1 on the way home from an unsuccessful ‘make or break’ holiday.
During the trial, Walters, 51, told the jury of the couple’s ‘dramatic and adventurous’ sex life, and said his wife usually initiated sex. Walters claimed it lacked the ‘intimacy’ he craved, however, adding: ‘What I needed was more than the touching. I wanted to fall asleep in each other’s arms.’
But sentencing him, Judge Nicholas Dean QC said Walters had been ‘psychologically oppressive’ to his wife. The judge told him: ‘It was your insatiable and unreasonable demands for sex with Tracy that were the root cause of what became a toxic marriage.
‘If she did not respond to your sexual demands you would at first behave like a spoiled child. If Tracy did not relent and have sex with you, you became abusive, at first verbally but ultimately physically, and I am satisfied that you regularly, and from quite an early point in the marriage, subjected Tracy to physical abuse.’
He described Walters as a ‘narcissistic, self- centred, selfabsorbed bully’ who had risked his own life in a crash carried out deliberately to kill his wife.
Walters told Leicester Crown Court the couple’s early encounters were ‘exciting’, with his partner ‘teaching me things I never knew about’. But the five-week trial heard Walters became ‘angry’ after their sex life fizzled out.
The court was told Mrs Walters complained to friends that her husband ‘made her feel like a sex object’, and would often retreat to a spare bedroom or friend’s house to avoid his advances.
The crash took place ten days after Mrs Walters, 48, called police when her husband slapped and pushed her after she rejected his advances, the trial heard. Officers came to their home in Swindon and interviewed Walters, but did not arrest him. Last night, a relative said Mrs Walters may still be alive if police had done more.
In March last year, CCTV footage captured Walters’ Mitsubishi swerving off the southbound carriageway outside Leicester before it ploughed through undergrowth and hit a tree – leaving Mrs Walters with serious injuries. She died two days after the crash.
Walters, a driving test examiner who was also badly hurt in the incident, was charged with murder two months later.
He denied the charge, claiming he couldn’t remember what had happened and may have fallen asleep, but was found guilty yesterday following four and a half hours of deliberation.
Prosecutor Charles Miskin QC told jurors Walters ‘used sex as a kind of sedative’ and ‘seemed to want it all the time’.
Mr Miskin said Walters was violent and controlling, and may have even started hitting his wife on their honeymoon in 2012. She had also made an application under ‘Clare’s Law’ – introduced following the death of Clare Wood at the hands of an ex-boyfriend who had a hidden history of abuse – to discover if her husband had a violent past.
Mrs Walters died as the couple returned home after holiday in the Yorkshire Dales was cutshort following a ‘big bust-up’ in which she demanded a divorce.
She had sent a series of frantic text messages to relatives during the journey. In one, 55 minutes before the crash, she told her son: ‘He’s driving and volatile. I need him arrested when we get back.’
The couple, who met in 2011 when Mrs Walters worked as a driving instructor, had both been married before, and each had two grown-up children.
Last night, a relative of Mrs Walters said Mr Walters was ‘nice to everyone else but violent and domineering towards Tracy behind closed doors’. The relative told the Daily Mail: ‘Tracy went to the police about it but they didn’t do anything. If they had, she would probably still be alive.’
Wiltshire Police last night confirmed two officers had been the subject of disciplinary hearings over contact with Mrs Walters and received written warnings. Both remain with the force.
‘Unreasonable demands’