‘Saddest words I have ever heard was when my wife told me to kill her’
Pensioner on trial for murder says couple made a suicide pact after doctors gave her two years to live
A PENSIONER told a murder trial jury yesterday that when his terminally ill wife asked him to kill her, it was the “saddest words I’ve ever heard”.
Graham Mansfield, 73, is on trial for the murder of his wife, Dyanne, 71, at their home in Hale, Greater Manchester, on Mar 24 last year.
He has claimed he is not guilty of murder or manslaughter because he was honouring a suicide pact with his wife when he killed her.
Police officers found Mr Mansfield in a pool of blood in his kitchen with a selfinflicted knife wound to his neck and his wife of 40 years slumped on a garden chair outside, her throat slit.
Mrs Mansfield, who had survived bladder cancer more than 20 years earlier, was suffering from terminal lung cancer and was told in October 2020 she had only two years to live, jurors at Manchester Crown Court heard.
Giving evidence yesterday, Mr Mansfield, a retired baggage handler at Manchester Airport, told the court his wife had asked him to kill her “when things get bad for me”.
He said: “It was the saddest words I had ever heard. I said: ‘Dyanne, I will. On one condition. That I go with you.’
“She said: ‘There is nothing wrong with you, there is no reason.’ I said: ‘Dyanne, I can’t live without you.’” The couple, who married in 1980, had a happy life, Mr Mansfield told the court. They did not have any children.
He said of their marriage: “It was wonderful. The best thing that had happened to me. You don’t want to speak for someone else, Dyanne is not here, but she felt that way.
“We were very fortunate. We liked doing the same things – cycling, gardening, walking, playing badminton.”
Mr Mansfield said his wife, a retired import and export clerk, was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 1999 which led to the removal of a kidney in 2004.
Years of uninterrupted good health followed, he said, with 2020 expected to be the “start of another fantastic year” as they had three holidays booked and a 40th wedding anniversary trip planned to the United States.
But in March 2020, his wife developed a “tickly cough”. In September, a doctor told her a scan had shown lung cancer had spread to her lymph nodes.
Mr Mansfield said they were “shellshocked” to learn just weeks later that her diagnosis was terminal.
The couple had settled on the garden of their home for their suicide pact, Mr Mansfield told police, so the neighbours would not see their bodies.
On the morning of Mar 24, he phoned 999 and told the operator he had killed his wife at 9pm the night before, but it had “gone wrong” when he tried to take his own life. He would later claim to detectives he had only called the emergency services so his sister would not discover their bodies.
Pc Claire Jones, who attended the scene, had told jurors Mr Mansfield kept saying “please let me die” when she discovered him badly injured.
Opening the case on Monday, David Temkin QC, prosecuting, said an “important feature” of the case was the absence of any record of Mrs Mansfield’s wishes.
He said: “There is no document, no reported conversation to demonstrate her awareness of, and agreement to, any suicide pact.”
The trial continues.