A dad who died at the hands of his girlfriend "predicted" his own murder.
Emma Walsh knifed Gary Morgan to death at her home on Lavan Close, in Everton, on April 10, this year. A court heard how Walsh had put Mr Morgan through a year of domestic abuse before fatally stabbing him in the heart.
Today, on Monday, October 17, she was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum of 18 years. Passing sentence, Judge Andrew Menary KC said it was a "tragic irony" that the tradesman and members of his family predicted his murder before it happened.
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The judge said: "Even then you insisted that your actions were in self-defence. The reality is Gary Morgan posed no threat to you at all that night.
"It is a tragic irony that so many members of his family and Gary Morgan himself predicted if he stayed with you, a woman he obviously loved, you would end up killing him."
The reference to Mr Morgan "predicting" his own death relates to messages shown in court. Mr Morgan text Walsh saying: "You hit me across the head with a f***ing rake. If you'd had a knife, you would have stabbed me.
"You're a f***ing bully and I want you out of my life. I'm not staying around to get killed by you." In a series of other messages Mr Morgan added he would "end up dead soon."
More messages were exchanged between the pair, with Mr Morgan telling Walsh at one point "You'll end up killing me. Can't even laugh in front of you without you kicking off."
He added: "You was threatening to send Crocky heads to my mum's house Emma. You were trying to stab me for f***s sake. You just can't go on like that. You'll end up on a murder charge."
A jury heard that over a year Walsh had attacked the victim with the "tools of his trade", swinging a rake at him and leaving him with a "big gash on his eyebrow" after an attack with a spirit level. Mr Morgan was regularly seen with black eyes, and even bite marks across his body.
On the night of the murder, Walsh and Mr Morgan went to the Belmont pub to watch Liverpool FC's 2-2 draw with Manchester City on the television before staying for karaoke night. They returned to the bungalow on Lavan Close at around 10pm, where she stabbed him in the chest in a "drink-fuelled, explosive rage".
The judge described Walsh as a " violent, controlling partner" and said: "It is not possible for me to know why you behaved like you did. It may have had something to do with your childhood experiences or chronic problems with alcohol and drugs.
"April 10 this year was a perfectly ordinary day. You spent the afternoon and evening in the pub. Some sort of argument developed, and as was your habit you became violent. You picked up a knife and you attacked your partner.
"You were determined to stab him. I accept that the horror of what you had just done may well have dawned on you soon after the stabbing. But at that stage you gave deliberately false accounts of how Mr Morgan had come by his injuries."
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