A Telford mother was this week beginning a life sentence in jail for murdering her boyfriend in a drunken stabbing at her Telford flat.
Wendy Walters, 43, of Bembridge, Brookside, was told she would spend a minimum of 15 years behind bars. The mother of three was convicted at Birmingham Crown Court of murdering her boyfriend Barry Evans, of Hurleybrook Way, Leegomery, in July last year.
The jury’s verdict was unanimous and, passing sentence, 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 added: “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.”
Blood
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.
The verdict followed a six dayt trial probing what defence counsel Mr William Andreae-Jones called the “half world” of drink and drug abusers in Telford.
Walters had denied murdering Mr Evans, 45, who had been living with her while her husband Christopher was in prison.
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. Paramedics were unable to stop him 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”.
The jury heard how Walters and her acquaintances - most of them in their 40s - spent an aimless existence on state benefits, cadging money off each other to feed their addictions.
Prison sentences, casual sex and even prostitution were a part of their lives, while domestic disputes could easily end in violence.
Mr Evans had at one time been a police cadet but his escalating drink and drug habit ended that career.
He had also worked as a security guard, had run an ice cream van and by the time he died last July at the age of 45, he was an alcoholic and had been on drugs for 25 years, including heroin and ketamine.
His final downfall was meeting up with Walters in 2006. The court heard that although they were fond of each other, they had an often stormy relationship with drink fuelled rows.
