He’s in the kitchen bleeding to death. Can I get my coat?
Chilling footage shows the moment police arrest wife for stabbing her ex-Army husband – as she calmly responds...
FOOTAGE of the moment a retired accountant was arrested in her M&S pyjamas for stabbing her husband to death was shown to a jury yesterday.
Penelope Jackson is seen calmly asking the officers if she can fetch her coat and slippers from the bungalow where former lieutenant colonel David Jackson, 78, lay bleeding to death.
Police bodycam images show her obeying orders to leave the house before saying: ‘He’s on the kitchen floor. Can I get my coat?’
The trial previously heard she had joked with officers about her pyjamas, asking: ‘Do you usually have murderers where they’re wearing Marks & Spencer pyjamas?’ In the footage shown yesterday of her being handcuffed in a police car, the accused says she stabbed her husband ‘because he’s an aggressive bully and nasty and I’ve had enough’.
Advised by an officer not to say any more, Jackson retorts: ‘I know what I’ve done. And I know why I’ve done it and if I haven’t done it properly I’m really annoyed.’
When she arrives at the police station, she is told she is being arrested on suspicion of murder, and responds: ‘Oh good.’
She is still asking for her slippers when an officer comes to take her temperature, prompting her to quip that it would be ‘just really great’ to ‘get Covid on top of this’. The footage was released as Jackson – who accepts she killed her husband
‘He’s nasty and I’ve had enough’
of 24 years unlawfully, but denies murder – began giving evidence in her defence.
The 66-year-old detailed a string of alleged violent outbursts by the retired Army officer which her barrister claims culminated in a row on February 13 that was ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’.
On one occasion her ‘jealous’ husband ‘chopped all the furniture up’ with an axe after she said she was taking a job in Germany, she told the jury.
Mr Jackson died after being stabbed three times with a kitchen knife at their £300,000 home in Berrow, near Westonsuper-Mare in Somerset.
At Bristol Crown Court yesterday, an 18-minute 999 call initially made by Mr Jackson as he lay dying was played to the jury – along with the footage of his wife’s subsequent arrest.
Jackson is heard telling operators: ‘He is in the kitchen bleeding to death with any luck.’
She says she stabbed him ‘because I’ve had enough’ and adds: ‘I might go and stab him again.’
She repeatedly tells the operator she doesn’t want any help to stem the bleeding, saying he ‘deserves everything he has got’.
Jackson says she thought she had stabbed him in the heart but adds: ‘He doesn’t have one.’ As she is arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, Jackson cuts in: ‘Oh, but it’s not attempted.’ As she gave evidence to a jury yesterday, Jackson said the couple – both of whom had been married several times before – had started their relationship while she was still with her previous husband, who went on to take his life.
She said Mr Jackson was ‘so jealous’ that when they first met she had ‘Property of David Jackson’ tattooed on her bottom to reassure him she wouldn’t see anyone else, she told the jury. ‘He was very pleased and thought it was a very nice Christmas present,’ she added. Jackson, who worked for the Ministry of Defence and met her husband through their military careers, claimed he was often violent following arguments.
‘It would escalate, and he would shake me most of the time, he strangled me sometimes and I would go unconscious sometimes,’ she said. Jackson told the court Mr Jackson would ‘always apologise’ after the incidents.
She said in 1996 he took an axe to their furniture when she was due to start a job in Germany after accusing her of planning to leave him. ‘The dining room was smashed to pieces,’ she said. ‘The sofas in the sitting room were all slashed and he chopped all the furniture up.’
Other incidents took place at a family barbecue and on a cruise ship, she claimed.
Jackson said that he began ignoring her if she didn’t want to have sex, saying he would ‘put his hands over my mouth’ and go ahead anyway. Earlier her barrister, Clare Wade QC, told the jury the 999 call was evidence of her client ‘losing her self-control because of the way she had been treated’. She said her client failed to reveal the extent of the abuse out of a ‘distorted sense of loyalty and a need to protect others’.
‘She lost all ability and sense of self and identity by the time she lashed out at David,’ the barrister said. ‘She knew where she was going but said, “My life in prison is preferable to what it was”.’
The trial continues.