Farmer ‘got away with killing wife for four decades’
Court told 89-year-old hid body in septic tank in 1982 so he could resume affair
A PIG farmer ‘got away with murder’ for 40 years after killing his wife and dumping her body in a septic tank, a court heard yesterday.
David Venables, now 89, had reported his wife missing in May 1982 – after allegedly rekindling an affair with his long-standing mistress.
Prosecutor Michael Burrows QC said Venables had conducted an on-off affair with the other woman for 15 years by the time his depressed wife Brenda, 48, vanished from their remote farmhouse.
Venables told police he had woken up to find her missing.
Her ‘skeletal remains’ were only discovered when the tank was drained three years ago, after the now-retired Venables had sold the property to his nephew. The octogenarian yesterday used headphones to help him follow proceedings.
Mr Burrows said very few people knew about the septic tank at the farm at Kempsey, Worcestershire.
He alleged Venables killed his wife because ‘he wanted her out of the way: he wanted to resume his long-standing affair with another woman’.
He said the septic tank was in a secluded spot, adding: ‘Even if someone did think to look inside the tank, her body would be hidden from view.
‘And for nearly 40 years, it was the perfect place and he got away with murder.’ The prosecutor said that at the time of Mrs Venables’ disappearance, some people thought she may have committed suicide.
But he said it was ‘beyond belief ’ that the ‘ prim and proper’ woman could have taken her own life by climbing into the tank, somehow lifting and replacing the heavy cast iron lid.
The court heard the couple, who had no children, married in 1960. Venables had Quaking Farm House built on land he
‘In the process of making a cake’
bought from his father, and the newlyweds moved in in 1961.
Worcester Crown Court heard that over the years Venables, or a farm worker, occasionally drained the tank, mixing waste matter with slurry from the pig farm to spread on the fields.
Venables met married Lorraine Styles, a care worker for his mother, in 1967 and they began an affair which Mrs Venables eventually learned of.
The on-off relationship continued and in February 1982 Venables convinced Mrs Styles to leave another man she had started a relationship with. That same month, Mrs Venables saw a psychiatrist, and told him she did not have a happy marriage and had not had sex with her husband since 1969. She was depressed and struggling to sleep.
The day before Venables reported his wife missing, one of her friends visited the farm and was told she had vanished. The friend noticed a cake tin lined with grease proof paper in the kitchen.
Mr Burrows said it was as though the keen baker ‘had been in the process of making a cake’. Although police searched for Mrs Venables and the missing person case was periodically reviewed, there is no record of the septic tank being searched.
The bones were found in a bag at the bottom of the 5ft 6in deep tank in 2019. DNA tests proved they were Mrs Venables. Cause of death could not be determined.
In his police interviews, Venables ‘lied about his affair and sought to downplay its significance’ until confronted with what the police knew, jurors were told.
Venables, of Kempsey, denies murder in May 1982. The trial continues.