Mother gets life for murder

Shropshire mother-of-three Wendy Walters was today jailed for life for murdering her boyfriend Barry Evans in a drunken stabbing at her Telford flat.The blonde-haired 43-year-old briefly shut her eyes but remained impassive when the jury at Birmingham Crown Court returned a unanimous guilty verdict yesterday.

Walters had claimed Mr Evans had stabbed himself in front of her with a kitchen knife before cleaning the blade, putting it in a drawer and collapsing in a pool of blood in the living room.

But the jury instead believed the prosecution case that it was Walters who had used the knife.

Today, the judge, Mrs Justice Macur, told Walters she would serve the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment and would have to remain in jail for a least 15 years before being considered for parole.

She told Walters: "This was an act committed in the heat of the moment.

"You were in a murderous rage no doubt induced by the drink you had taken to excess and the drugs you had been using."

The jury yesterday took less than two hours to reach its verdict after a six-day trial probing what defence counsel Mr William Andreae-Jones called the "half world" of drink and drug abusers in Telford.

Walters, of Bembridge, Brookside, had denied murdering former police cadet Mr Evans, 45, of Hurleybrook Way, Leegomery, on July 7 last year.

The court had heard Mr Evans had been living with Walters while her husband Christopher was in prison.

He has since been released and was in court today to support her.

On the morning of July 7 they had been drinking mugs of whisky at the flat before Walters left to go shopping at Telford Town Centre.

The prosecution said she returned that afternoon, got into a row with Mr Evans and stabbed him eight times with a kitchen knife, three times in the back.

Walters phoned 999, claiming he had committed suicide, but paramedics were unable to prevent Mr Evans from bleeding to death on the floor.

Although he had a history of self- harm, two pathologists said it would have been virtually impossible for him to have stabbed himself in the back with such force that it pierced bone.

His blood-stained shirt pocket, apparently ripped off in a struggle, was found in Walters's handbag. She told the court she had no idea how it had got there. Walters repeatedly insisted to the jury that a drunk Mr Evans had stabbed himself. The defence also suggested another person may have entered the flat and stabbed Mr Evans.

Mr William Davies QC, prosecuting, dismissed this account as "simply rubbish".

See also: Seedy world of addiction

Camera footage is hailed by police