PENSIONER(79) WHO BEAT WIFE(82) TO DEATH WILL SPEND 5-YEARS IN JAIL

A pensioner who beat his wife to death with his walking stick after a row about the heating has been jailed for five years.

Douglas Bailey, 79, was obsessed with money, even though he had tens of thousands of pounds in savings. 

He clubbed his 82-year-old wife Hazel 22 times around the head and neck and punched her so hard her false teeth fell out.

He was furious because she had turned the central heating on when it was only early September, police sources said. It is believed Mrs Bailey had been dead for two days by the time her body was found after the attack last year. The couple’s window cleaner raised the alarm when Bailey answered the door in blood-stained pyjamas, a court heard yesterday.

He alerted a neighbour who went round to check up on the couple. At first Bailey lied that his wife was at a friend’s house, but eventually admitted: ‘It’s Hazel. She’s dead. I have killed her.’ 

The couple had been married for 45 years and did not have any children. They lived in Winsford, Cheshire, in a bungalow Bailey had built himself. The retired joiner, who was later diagnosed as being in the early stages of dementia, looked confused yesterday as a judge said his crime was so serious he had no choice but to send him to prison, despite his age.

‘It is a tragedy to see you here at your age and that your wife of so many years is dead at your hands,’ Judge Elgin Edwards told him. ‘This was a brutal attack on a vulnerable old lady of nearly 83 years.’ The couple used be ‘well turned out’ and keep their home spotless, Chester Crown Court was told.  In recent years, however, they had been in declining health and struggled to look after themselves.

Mrs Bailey had sciatica and needed help getting about, but her husband had shown little sympathy, neighbours later told police. Mrs Bailey had also been seen with bruises, apparently inflicted by her husband, but police had not been informed and the ‘proud’ couple had rejected help from social services.

Simon Medland QC, prosecuting, said Bailey’s concern about the heating was part of an obsession with saving money. He added: ‘Whilst they had not much by way of income, they had tens of thousands of pounds in shares, owned their bungalow outright, which is a valuable, substantial property, and £68,000 in bank cash.’

Bailey was in custody for more than a year while experts compiled reports on his mental health, finally concluding he had been suffering from dementia. As a result, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Mr Medland said the killing would otherwise have been ‘a grave case of murder, involving the killing of an 82-year-old woman by protracted, substantial violence’.

He added: ‘She must have known it was her husband inflicting the injuries on her and it was plain death was far from instantaneous.’