Husband who faked wife’s suicide jailed for murder
AHUSBAND who strangled his wife then attempted to cover his tracks by staging a fake suicide will spend a minimum of 17 years in jail.
Derek Potter, 64, killed his wife of 26 years because she had been “doing his head in” before setting up a noose in a spare bedroom and pretending he had found her hanged.
He would have got away with killing wife Lesley, 66, but only days before his wife’s body was due to be cremated he told a woman in a pub that he was responsible.
Judge Mr Justice Soole jailed Potter for life yesterday and told him he would serve at least 17 years for the “ferocious attack”, saying he was sure that in the moment he strangled his wife he intended to kill her.
The sentencing hearing heard moving statements from Mrs Potter’s children, who described their mother as “kind and loving”.
Her daughter Victoria Bull said: “My mother was cruelly, violently and deceitfully taken from me and my family in the most unimaginable way.”
Police are now reviewing their initial response to Mrs Potter’s death after concerns were raised in court by the prosecution.
AMAN who murdered his wife and then staged a hanging to make it looked as though she had killed herself has been jailed for life.
Derek Potter, 64, strangled his wife, Lesley, 66, then rigged up a noose in a spare bedroom to fake a suicide.
He almost got away with murder, but two weeks before his wife’s cremation he confessed in a pub to a colleague.
Swansea Crown Court heard the carpenter murdered his wife of 26 years at their home in the Mumbles area of the city on April 7.
He rang the emergency services and told them he had found her hanging in a bedroom and had tried to revive her.
When paramedics and police arrived they found her naked body on a cabinet in the bedroom with a noose around her neck and a length of rope hanging from a beam.
Potter told them he had cut her down and her death was not originally treated as suspicious.
But on April 25 he told Natalia Mikhailoea-Kisselevskaia: “I love my wife very much but she was doing my head in, so I had to strangle her.”
She told police, and Mrs Potter’s body was taken from a chapel of rest ahead of her planned cremation on May 8 and back to hospital for a detailed post-mortem examination.
A pathologist found Mrs Potter had suffered 30 rib fractures and more than 30 bruises over her neck, face, arms, back, legs and feet and concluded manual strangulation had played a part in her death.
Potter claimed his wife killed herself or could have died while choking herself for sexual pleasure. He also tried blaming his son-in-law and Miss Mikhailoea-Kisselevskaia.
Potter, of Hill Street, Mumbles, denied murder but was found guilty following a two-week trial.
Mark Wyeth QC, defending, apologised to Mrs Potter’s family for the “distress” caused by the defendant’s actions.
“It is a side to him that is some type of benign fantastist, and he has a tendency to say things that are superficially shocking,” he added.
Jailing Potter for life with a minimum of 17 years, Mr Justice Soole said: “I have concluded and am sure that you strangled her without premeditation, in a sudden and furious burst of temper, and that you there and then set about trying to cover it up by the pretence that she had committed suicide.
“The prosecution contends that your treatment of your wife’s dead body constituted an aggravating factor within the meaning of the statutory words ‘concealment, destruction or dismemberment of the body’.
“Whether or not your conduct in that shameful and despicable charade strictly falls within the meaning of that category, I consider that it is in any event a non-statutory aggravating factor of comparable weight.
“This is so in two respects. First because you thereby treated and exposed Lesley Potter’s naked body to that terrible indignity and dishonour.
“Secondly, because of its very attempt to frustrate the course of justice and to cover up what you had done.
“But for the intervention of Natalia Mikhailoea-Kisselevskaia, the consequent postponement of the cremation and the subsequent police and forensic investigation, you would have succeeded.
“I am sure that, in the moment of your sudden furious attack, you intended to kill.
“As your own evidence chillingly explained, you had a very clear understanding of the difference between the use of the hands as a temporary restraint and their use to kill by strangulation.
“You knew what you were doing. You acted as you did in a sudden, independent and terrible moment of hostile fury.”