Husband ‘shattered lecturer’s skull with hammer’
A UNIVERSITY lecturer’s skull was ‘caved in’ and her jaw shattered after her husband attacked her with a lump hammer, a court heard yesterday. Dr Marian Bond, 62, was asleep in bed at the couple’s £1million house when she was hit ‘multiple times’.
Paul Bond is then alleged to have ‘calmly’ spoken to a 999 operator and explained he had attacked his wife of more than 30 years.
The businessman, also 62, was covered with Dr Bond’s blood when police arrived, a jury was told.
Details emerged on the first day of a trial for attempted murder.
Mr Bond, who ran a computing business from home, previously admitted causing grievous bodily harm but the plea was rejected by the Crown.
Amjad Malik QC, prosecuting, told Cambridge Crown Court: ‘The defendant made a decision to attack his wife and he chose a time when she would be in her most vulnerable state.
‘She was asleep in her bed and she slept, it appears, naked.’
He added: ‘He had ensured that the bedroom was dark. All the curtains, we say, were drawn on that morning. He had switched the lights off. Why did he do that?
‘He must have known this would prevent his wife, Dr Marian Bond, from being able to see what, the prosecution say, was a lethal attack … She wouldn’t have been able to see what was coming – or it may be that he wouldn’t have wanted to see the results.’
Dr Bond was left fighting for her life following the attack before 8am on July 11 last year in the large detached house in Over, Cambridgeshire, where the couple have lived for more than 20 years.
The lecturer in animal and envi- ronmental biology at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge was hit at least twice with the 12in, 2.5lb hammer, the court heard, although the presence of hairs on the weapon suggested further blows.
Dr Bond was lying in bed on her right, leaving the left-hand side of her body and face exposed.
One strike to the side of her head caused multiple fractures and pushed bone into her brain.
After the attack, Bond is said to have placed the blood- stained hammer under a pillow on the bed and called 999.
Paramedics believe Dr Bond, who was unconscious, had been moved by the time they arrived, with her head at the bottom of the bed, the jury was told.
She was taken to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge where she was placed in an induced coma, and part of her skull was removed by surgeons.
She has since recovered but will be left with physical reminders of the attack for life.
Scarring was visible above her left eye as she sat in court yesterday, dressed in casual clothes and a hat. She remained impassive as she heard the evidence against her husband, who wore a smart suit and spectacles and listened with a hearing loop.
Bond had not given a reason for the brutal attack, the court was told. He appeared ‘emotionless’ during two police interviews and refused to answer questions.
Explaining to the jury that Bond’s plea to the lesser charge had been rejected, Mr Malik added: ‘The prosecution say that, on the evidence they have, you can be sure that this defendant, in these circumstances, intended to kill his wife. This was an attempt to murder her when he struck down with that hammer as she lay asleep.’
The case continues.
‘Vulnerable state’