‘Confession of murder over a pint’

AMAN accused of murdering his wife and then staging her suicide to cover his tracks confessed to what he had done over a pint in a pub, a court has heard.

The body of 66-year-old Lesley Potter was found at the marital home in Mumbles on April 7 this year.

Husband Derek told the police he found her hanged in an upstairs room, and cut her down.

But the prosecution says he murdered her – a charge the 64-year-old denies.

Yesterday, Swansea Crown Court heard evidence from Natalia Mikhailoea-Kisselevskaia, a friend of Nicole Potter, one of the Potters’ daughters.

She told the court that on April 25 she had helped the defendant – a carpenter by trade – with a roofing job at the Trams cafe building in Mumbles.

She said the pair went for a pint in The George pub in the village after work, taking a table by the bar.

Miss Mikhailoea-Kisselevskaia said: “We were on our first pints when he said ‘I have got to tell you something’.

“He said, ‘I love my wife very much but she was doing my head in so I strangled her’.

“I was really shocked but I thought at first he was just joking. He was saying it with a straight face – no tears in his eyes, no laughter. I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s done it’.

“He told me not to tell his daughter, Nicole – but if I did tell her, he didn’t care.”

Elwen Evans QC, for the prosecution, asked the witness what happened next.

Miss Mikhailoea-Kisselevskaia said Potter then asked her to move in with him, saying he liked her.

She said: “He said I didn’t even have to give him sex, just be his. He said he really liked me.

“I said he was mad, and tried to change the subject.”

Miss Mikhailoea-Kisselevskaia told the court she didn’t go to the police straightaway because she didn’t want to “get involved”, but a few days later, after talking to friends, did report the pub conversation.

The witness was then cross-examined by Mark Wyeth QC for the defendant.

He put it to the witness that she may have misunderstood what the defendant meant when he talked about not telling Nicole, and what he was really talking about was not telling his daughter he was drinking alcohol again.

Miss Mikhailoea-Kisselevskaia said: “No, I understood very well what he said.”

She added that she knew Potter was a recovering alcoholic because Nicole had previously told her.

The trial continues.