15 May 2023 , 14:06
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Retired miner David Hunter broke down in tears in a Cypriot court as he described the moment he killed his terminally ill wife.
He told Paphos District Court that Janice, 74, had “cried and begged” for him to kill her as her blood cancer deteriorated.
David, 75, said Janice, his wife of 52 years, was asking him every day for six weeks to end her life.
He refused to do so until one day he agreed in the hope it would calm her. He insisted he had no intention of carrying out the act.
But nine days later, on December 18 2021, David pressed his hands over his wife’s mouth and nose.
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David cried as he told the court: “57 years - the last thing I would want to do is to kill my wife.
“It was her decision that she wanted to die, not mine - hers. It was her decision that she didn’t want any more treatment.
David arriving at the district court in Paphos, Cyprus (Daily Mirror)“She has her own mind and she asked me. I would never in a million years have done it. She wasn’t just my wife - she was my best friend.
“I didn’t just decide to kill her. I loved her so much. I still love her.
“You don’t know what we went through. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
David said he stood up from his seat in their retirement home in Tremithousa and walked towards the kettle to make a coffee, with Janice sobbing as she remained seated.
He found himself leaning over, gripping a kitchen bench with both hands while his wife cried uncontrollably.
“I turned to my wife and she was still crying,” David said with tears in his eyes.
'I didn’t just decide to kill her. I loved her so much' (PA)“The next thing I knew I put my hands here (over her nose and mouth) and when it finished she was a grey colour.
“She didn’t look like my wife at all and it was the first time I cried after many years.”
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David is on trial for the pre-meditated murder of Janice but insists it was her wish to die and that he had not planned the act.
He tried to take his own life with a concoction of tablets and alcohol immediately after.
He told the court of their “perfect” life together which only became blighted as ill health struck in older age.
He said Janice had become progressively more ill with blood cancer and as a result of her medication had no quality of life.
David and Janice together in Cyprus in 2015 (Albanpix.com)“She cried and begged me to help her,” David, from Ashington, Northumberland, told the court through a translator.
“For five or six weeks before she died she was asking me to help her, she was asking me more every day. She was sleeping in the leather chair downstairs and for the last week, we slept down on those chairs together.
“I felt so helpless and hopeless that I couldn’t do anything for her. Every day she asked me a bit more intensely to do it. I really didn’t want to do it. The last week she started crying and begging me. I said no.
“She said, ‘I can’t go on, this isn’t the life for me. We just go to the hospital and stay at home. I can’t go on.
“She started becoming hysterical, so I told her, ‘Yes, I’m going to help you’. I won’t tell you how and when.’
“I didn’t intend to do it. I just told her that to calm her down.”
He said he had hoped she would change her mind.
“I would never kill my wife,” he told prosecutor Andreas Hadjikyrou under cross-examination.
David leaves court in the back of a police vehicle today (Andy Commins / Daily Mirror)“You haven’t seen the six years of strain she’s gone through.
“My wife was strong-minded but she passed her pain barrier and she couldn’t take anymore. I respected my wife (‘s decision).
Asked by defence lawyer Ritsa Pekri how the last days were, Mr Hunter said: “She was crying, crying, crying, begging, begging, begging.
“She wasn’t taking any care of herself. For the last two or three weeks she could not move her arms and had trouble with her legs, she couldn’t balance.
“She was only eating soup, she couldn’t hold anything down. She lost a lot of weight. She lost so much weight that there was no flesh to put her injections in.”
Her illness and medication had resulted in Janice suffering from such bad diarrhoea that for the last three-and-a-half years of her life she had to wear nappies, David told the court, adding that it left her feeling embarrassed.
“I was thinking about what to do 24/7,” he said.
The couple on their wedding day (PA)“I was trying to change her mind all the time. I was telling her this isn’t easy.”
He described how, finally, he held his hands over her nose and mouth.
“She did not attempt to stop me. I don’t know how long I kept my hands there for,” he told the court.
“I would never have helped her to take her life if she had not begged me.”
David said his wife would have been unable to swallow tablets, which is why he chose to suffocate her.
Denying he had planned the death, he told the court that if he had planned it, he would have wanted them both to die - and would have had more tablets in the house to ensure he killed himself.
David told the press after the hearing: “I got my say, this is what I wanted. To tell them things that they never even thought about.
“The last six months, I wouldn’t like anyone to go through that. Prison is nothing compared to what we went through.”
As the hearing came to a close, Hunter asked to address the judge, telling him: “My wife was suffering and she actually said, ‘I don’t want to live anymore,’ and I still said no.
“I was hoping she would change her mind. I loved her so much. I did not plan it, I swear to God.”