Husband who stabbed wife to death cleared of murder

A jealous husband who stabbed his wife to death has been cleared of murder because she was leaving him. Jonathon Cudworth killed mum of two Mariola when he "snapped" after she admitted having sex with a lover and wanted to end the marriage.

He stabbed her four times but has now been cleared of murder and found guilty of manslaughter.

Cudworth, 35, was sentenced to 15 years in prison at the Canterbury Crown Court where a jury heard that he lost control, grabbed a knife and lashed out. 

Judge Adele Williams said if  they believed that wife Mariola, known as Mika, threatened to leave him and believed that was the trigger for Cudworth to snap, they could acquit him of murder and convict of manslaughter.
The jury heard how in the hours before her death, Polish-born Mika had been holding hands and sharing a kiss with a new man in her life.

Cudworth was furious when his texts to the barmaid had not been answered and she was late returning home from working at a pub.
After she had got home and changed her clothes, he grabbed her by the throat before plunging a knife into her four times.

Defending, Oliver Saxby QC asked: "Were you thinking straight?"
Cudworth replied: "No, I wasn't thinking straight."

The jury then heard that the former soldier and forklift driver of Northbourne, Kent, set about disposing of the body, which he dumped behind a composts heap in the couple's back garden.
In his final address, Mr Saxby told the jury: "Look at the circumstances that he was in, backed up against a table."
He said Mika had been "in his face" telling how she had sex with Dan Groombridge, a regular at the pub, and was planning to leave.

Mr Saxby added: "Then his hands feel the knife and at that point he loses control.
"Might someone, in those  circumstances, who has realised both the deception he has been subjected to and the fact his life was about to be utterly shattered, snap, as Cudworth did?" Cudworth reported her missing to the police, told lies to friends and family, posed as her on Facebook, and threw her belongings in the sea.
Prosecutor Philip Bennetts QC told the jury: "In an effort to hide what he had done he cleaned the house and disposed of all he could."
And secretly, while officers scoured the area, Cudworth was researching on the internet how fast bodies decayed.

Cudworth then disposed of her body in a field near Eastry, Kent, where it was later discovered by a medium.
He added: "Cudworth later posted messages in Polish purporting to be Mika.
"They had the appearance of being poorly translated and did not make grammatical sense.

"Her friends suspected that they had not been written by her."

Jailing him for 15 years, Judge Adele Williams said: "This was a brutal and callous killing.You then took considerable steps to destroy all the evidence of the killing before laying a false trail to cover up.
"On all the evidence, you subjected her to physical and emotional abuse and have shown no real remorse or regret."

mirror.co.uk