Woman stabs husband and tells police ‘I admit it all’, footage shows

A retired accountant who stabbed her husband to death has told a jury that he repeatedly beat her and once held a knife to her throat, as footage was released of her being arrested and telling police she hoped he would die – and asking officers to fetch her coat.

Penelope Jackson, 66, said her husband, former army Lt Col David Jackson, 78, once head-butted her when he returned from home and threw her down cellar stairs during a Mother’s Day celebration at an officer’s mess.

She said: “It would always start out with him being verbally aggressive. It was always about me being disloyal and he would say ‘You never loved me anyway’. He called me a ‘thing’ like I wasn’t a person.

“It would escalate, and he would shake me most of the time, he strangled me sometimes and I would go unconscious sometimes. Other times I would be semi-conscious, and I would be on the bed or the floor and if he was really angry he would kick me.”

She said he once grabbed her round the throat in a row over a coffee and on another occasion suffocated her until she was unconscious after a dispute over a cheeseboard. She said if she did not want sex, “he would put his hands over my mouth and we would have sex”.

In footage released at the end of the prosecution case, Jackson is seen telling officers “I admit it all”. She says her husband is on the kitchen floor of their bungalow in Somerset. Jackson says “there’s nothing nasty”, before adding: “With any luck you’ll be too late.”

Later Jackson responds with “oh good” after she is told she is being arrested for murder. When she is informed she has to have her temperature taken, she tells an officer: “That would be just really great, get Covid on top of this.”

The jury at Bristol crown court has been told Jackson stabbed her husband to death in the kitchen of their bungalow in Berrow, Somerset, in February. She has admitted manslaughter but denied murder. In a 999 call that has been played to the jury, he can be heard screaming as a knife is allegedly driven into him.

Part of the recording was released at the conclusion of the prosecution case.

Jackson can be heard telling the call handler: “I might go and stab him again.” The call handler asks her not to, and Jackson goes on: “I am compos mentis … I am in the lounge, he is in the kitchen bleeding to death with any luck.”

Asked how many times she stabbed him, Jackson says once. “And then he said I wouldn’t do it again, so I did it twice more.”

Jackson also says she thought she had stabbed her husband in the heart, but adds: “Well he hasn’t got one.”

Police rushed to the house and bodycam footage shows an officer calling out: “Get the ambulance in pronto – we need CPR.” Jackson says: “No, no, no, please don’t,” and adds that she “should have stabbed him a bit more”.

She is cold and asks for a coat. “I have no intention of not agreeing to what I have done,” she said. “I know what I have done and I know why I’ve done it and if I haven’t done it properly I’m really annoyed.”

Jackson adds: “I stabbed him … He’s an aggressive bully and nasty and I’ve had enough.”

At the start of the defence case, Clare Wade QC, said: “This case is about domestic abuse, control and ultimately entrapment. Domestic abuse is not physical all of the time.”

She added: “She [Jackson] lost control and stabbed her husband. She did not intend to kill him or cause serious harm. She lost all ability and sense of self and identity by the time she lashed out at David.”

Jackson told the jury her husband was so jealous when they first met she got “property of David Jackson” tattooed on her bottom.

She said her previous husband had killed himself after she admitted an affair with Mr Jackson. She told the jury Jackson’s behaviour changed after the suicide of his son, Gavin.

“He would get so angry for no reason. He walked in the door one day and out of the blue he head-butted me.” Jackson recalled one occasion during a family barbecue while they were in Germany when he held a knife to her throat. She said: “We had a huge row and David then hit me, head-butted me and punched me. I ran away into the house, he followed eventually and had a knife to my throat. His family pulled him off me.”

Jackson told the jury: “I didn’t know if I was waking up to nice David or nasty David. He used to say, ‘You never loved me,’ and I used to say, ‘If I don’t love you, why would I stay all these years? You know I love you’.

“I still love him, even after all of this.”

The trial continues.