NSW:Man who stabbed wife 41 times mentally ill

AAP General News (Australia)
08-05-2011
NSW:Man who stabbed wife 41 times mentally ill

Eds: The judge has ordered the names of the offender, the victim and the child not
be published, as well as the gender of the child.



By Britt Smith

SYDNEY, Aug 5 AAP - A man who left a carving knife embedded in his wife's neck after
stabbing her 41 times in front of their child has been found not guilty of murder due
to mental illness.

NSW Supreme Court Acting Justice Graham Barr concluded on Friday the offender, who
cannot be named for legal reasons, was suffering from a chronic paranoid schizophrenic
illness when he ferociously attacked his young wife at their Griffith house.

Their baby, whose cries were heard throughout the ordeal, was found lying on the carpet
near the mother's feet, along with the second weapon, a serrated steak knife.

A large carving knife was protruding from her neck, where the most wounds were inflicted,
along with the upper chest.

The woman's mother had been on the phone to her daughter and remained on the line throughout
the January 2010 killing.

She heard her and the baby screaming, while the accused was making a "grunting" sound
as if he was doing heavy physical work, the judge said.

Moments later the man walked into Griffith Police Station covered in blood.

"I just killed my wife," he said, putting his head in his hands and leaning against the counter.

Justice Barr described the couple's relationship as argumentative, partly because the
husband wanted his wife to behave more accordingly to the customs and habits of his own
culture.

The man was critical about the way she managed the household.

On the day of the murder, the woman called her mother complaining that he was threatening
to take the child overseas.

A heated argument erupted and then she heard her daughter yell: "No, I won't do it,
please don't".

The man later told Department of Community Services caseworkers: "I got cut and I cut
her throat. She fell down".

She said "I'm dying", he told them, but added she was always joking around and he was drunk.

The judge accepted evidence that the man experienced a delusional belief he was in
imminent danger of being killed, that his child was in danger of being mistreated and
that he was at risk of being deported.

He told a psychiatrist he believed his wife and mother-in-law wanted to stab him.

"He responded by obtaining a knife and stabbing the deceased," the judge said, later
adding that "the attack was ferocious".

Justice Barr also accepted that the man's psychotic illness would have totally deprived
him of the capacity to know and understand that he should not have acted as he did.

In noting the events must have been "distressing and perplexing" for the victim's relatives,
the judge extended the court's sympathies to them.

"It is to be hoped that now that the court hearing is over those concerned may gain
some peace of mind," he said.

The judge ordered the man be detained at a jail psychiatric hospital ward until, and
if, the Mental Health Review Tribunal deems him not to be a danger to the community or
himself.

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