Murder, abuse and a shocking revelation from a daddy’s girl

After their separation, Anne- Marie Birch’s stalker husband Lee staged an ambush one morning by the side of the road as she drove her teenage daughter to school.

Lee was wearing a bizarre costume, and a mask: daughter Molly called it a ‘scream mask’. And he was holding up a sign. It said: ‘I love you.’

Within weeks, Anne-Marie was dead — bludgeoned by her husband, who calmly went to the pub for a pint before dialling 999 and confessing to the murder.

We heard the chilling call played back in Love You To Death: A Year Of Domestic Violence ( BBC2), a memorial to the 86 British women killed by their husbands or partners in a single year, 2013.

Some of the murdered women were just named. A stark detail or two was supplied for others — a mother burned to death in an ‘honour killing’, a wife who died after enduring 30 years of domestic abuse.

Seven of the stories were told more fully, starting with the 23-year- old single mother who ignored the warnings of her friends and family that her latest boyfriend was no good. He drank heavily, he stole her money to buy drugs — and after he killed her in front of her toddler, he locked the child in their house with the mother’s body.

then there was the Pakistani bride, Amina Bibi, who came to Britain in an arranged marriage, speaking no english. When her husband Mohamed tired of her, he paid a junkie £1,000 to kill her. Amina’s body had 72 stab wounds.

the last story told of 80-year-old Chloe Siokos, whose unfaithful, workshy husband murdered her out of sheer spite after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

this was a powerful documentary by film-maker Vanessa engle, but it was by no means without flaws. the grimly atmospheric shots of dead birds, electricity pylons and litter fluttering on barbed wire soon became a visual nuisance.

And the recitation of victims’ names, like a battlefield roll call, was trite. there is nothing heroic about any aspect of domestic abuse.

More seriously, engle ignored figures from the Office for National Statistics which show that of every six people killed by a partner or expartner in Britain, at least one will be male. It would have been far more representative to make one of the stories about a man.

Much better as well to have a few more of the voices mourning the dead — be they friends, family, workmates or neighbours — as men. As it was, almost the only male characters in those seven stories were the killers. even the children who appeared were all girls.

engle surely cannot have meant to suggest that every man is a potential wife-murderer, but that is what her documentary seemed to imply.

Despite this weighty drawback, this was an important programme. It drew attention to the prevalence of domestic murder, which is usually seen on tV only as a dramatic device in soaps and crime dramas.

And it also highlighted the British instinct to ignore violence behind closed doors, as if it’s none of our business. One neighbour was falling over herself to emphasise what a nice, kind, jolly man the murderer-next-door had been.

Most shocking was the grownup daughter, a self- confessed daddy’s girl, who appeared to absolve her father of any guilt for murdering her mother: ‘It was an out- of-the-blue thing, too late before he could do anything.’

If that attitude to violent crime made no sense, neither did the goings-on in (ItV).

Philip Glenister, as the prison officer on the run with convict MyAnna Buring shackled to his wrist, is worried about his missing daughter — and that apparently gives him the right to do anything, even shove a pregnant policewoman down a flight of stairs.

He has already chucked a constable under a car. He’s much more thug than hero, and since the police nabbed him in the final scene, they should throw the book at him.

But there’s one more episode of this ludicrous drama to go.

No doubt, in a rush of staccato violins and battering bongos, Phil will go on the run again.

Hope he twists his ankle.