A pensioner who strangled his wife to death after he 'snapped' days into the first UK lockdown has been jailed.
Anthony Williams, 70, told police he “literally choked the living daylights” out of his wife of 46 years on the morning of March 28 last year at their home in south Wales.
Williams was cleared of murder following a trial in which a psychologist argued his anxiety “was heightened” because of lockdown, which impaired his ability to exercise self-control.
He told officers that he had “snapped” while in bed following a period of feeling depressed and anxious.
Williams admitted manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility and was sentenced to five years in jail.
Judge Paul Thomas told the court that Williams was suffering from irrational anxiety, depression, a lack of sleep, and had been “obsessing” over Covid-19.
The court heard he had suffered sleepless nights in the run-up to the attack due to “trivial” fears, including that he would run out of money.
He said he attacked 67-year-old Ruth Williams when she told him to “get over it” after he expressed his concerns to her.
Williams chased his wife down the stairs and again grabbed her by her throat as she tried to unlock the front door to escape, saying he found himself “throttling her to death”.
Mrs Williams was found slumped in the couple’s porch with a pair of keys in her hand.
Judge Thomas said it was a “tragic case on several levels”, but in his view Williams’s mental state was “severely affected at the time”.
“The overwhelming greatest tragedy here is a lady of 67 who had so much to live for, had her life ended by an act of great violence at the hands, literally, of a man she loved for very nearly 50 years," he said.
“You will have to live with the knowledge that you killed your wife, and that you left your daughter without her beloved mother,” he told Williams, who he described as "a placid, non-aggressive, inoffensive man, happily married".
Mrs Williams was taken to hospital where she was pronounced dead, having suffered haemorrhaging in her eyes, face and mouth which were consistent with strangulation, as well as five neck fractures.
Her cause of death was given as pressure to the neck, with a pathologist saying the lack of a ligature mark did not rule out use of a “soft” dressing gown cord found at their home.
The couple’s daughter, Emma Williams, 40, told the court her parents spent “90% of their time together”, were “not argumentative people”, and she had never heard either of them even “raise their voice” to each other.
“My dad’s a gentle giant. He wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Ms Williams said.
But she told the court her father had shown signs of strange behaviour from January 2020, including claiming he was going to lose the couple’s home and becoming “obsessed” with turning off lights and heating to save money.
But she said the couple had savings of around £148,000, as well as £18,000 in their current account in the days before lockdown was announced.
Ms Williams said her father was watching news reports on the global pandemic “all the time” and believed “no-one’s ever leaving the house again”.
Williams did not give evidence at his trial, but he told police interviewers he had worried about being unable to buy new shoes and the inability to hire someone to fix tiles on his roof if they came loose.
He also said he had found lockdown “really, really hard” just five days into the UK-wide restrictions, felt “depressed” and was worried the couple would run out of cash because banks were shut.
He said he had coped “not very well” in the 18 months since his retirement from Cwmbran’s Just Rollers factory, saying the couple “didn’t have much of a social life”.
But he described his wife as being “happy” since her own retirement from an Asda store four years earlier, despite herself being diagnosed with depression.
Psychologist Dr Alison Witts told the trial Williams’s anxiety and depressive illness were “heightened” by the tough coronavirus measures imposed on the UK days earlier and impaired his ability to exercise self-control.
Dr Witts said Williams’s factory job had been “one of his main coping mechanisms” for his “neurotic disposition”, but when he retired he “lost all structure and sense of purpose”.
But another psychologist, Dr Damian Gamble, said Williams had no documented history of suffering a depressive illness and had “no psychiatric defences” available to him, saying he believed Williams “knew what he was doing at the time”.
A Plaid Cymru politician was also reprimanded in court for retweeting “highly inappropriate” comments about the trial which risked it being aborted.
On Saturday, Helen Mary Jones, a Welsh Parliament MS, shared a Twitter post written by a domestic abuse campaigner which expressed “hope” that the jury would find Williams guilty of murdering his wife.
The judge accused both Ms Jones and the author of the tweet, domestic violence campaigner Rachel Williams, of abusing their “social media, political influences and high profiles” and of risking the collapse of the trial.
The tweet, written alongside a BBC article about the trial, said: “Another perp using the ‘I just snapped’. It is complete bullshit! As so many of us will know, there would have been history of domestic abuse.
“I hope this jury finds him guilty of murder.
“Rest in peace, Ruth.”
Judge Paul Thomas said the jury in the trial had been sent away for the weekend and were in the middle of deliberating counts of murder or manslaughter when the post was written and shared.
The judge said he believed the post “ran the risk of influencing a jury” had they become aware of it, particularly as the catchment area for the court’s juries fell into Ms Jones’ Mid and West Wales constituency.
“On the face of it, it amounts to a clear contempt of court. You both abused your social media, political influences and high profiles,” Judge Thomas said.
“Had a juror seen that tweet, the trial would have been aborted at the cost of tens of thousands of pounds of public money.”
Ms Jones told the court she had not “read the original post carefully” but accepted it was “entirely” her fault for not realising the case was ongoing.
Ms Williams, a prominent anti-domestic violence campaigner and pioneer of the Ask for Ani (Action Needed Immediately) scheme of which the Duchess of Cornwall is a patron, apologised to the court and said jeopardising such a trial “would go against every fibre in my body”.
Judge Thomas said that having heard from both women, there was no need to invoke a summary procedure for contempt of court, which could lead to further action being taken, and that only “admonishment is appropriate”.
