R vs DALTON and a sawn body. ( 2005 )

Five years for husband who sawed up wife's body

DAILY MAIL online

 25 July 2005

A henpecked headteacher who killed his bullying wife with a single punch, sawed her body into nine pieces and hid them in the fridge-freezer has been jailed for a total of five years at the Old Bailey today.

Graduate Paul Dalton was cleared of murder but convicted of her manslaughter on Friday and sentence was adjourned until today.
Mr Justice Gross told Dalton he had committed a "very serious, horrific offence".
He said: "You lashed out at your wife in the course of an argument and in my judgment after no little taunting on her part.
"The blow was spontaneous. You did not intend to kill her but it was a hefty blow of sufficient force to fracture her jaw in two places."
Dalton maintained throughout that he accidentally killed Korean-born Tae Hui after suffering years of torment and provocation at her hands. She had treated him like a slave, the court heard.
"She always got what she wanted. I was scared of her. Everyone was scared of her," he said.
Dalton told the jury that they had quarrelled in May last year when his wife taunted him with an affair.
"She was saying the most hurtful things. She was just saying she married me for the visa."

'Panic'

 

When she lunged at him, he said he hit her in a blind panic.
"As she came forward, I just lashed out at her. It just happened so quickly. I didn't intend to hit her. I didn't have anything in my mind," he said.
Dalton said that he went upstairs for a while and when he came back down, his wife was where he had left her with blood coming out of her mouth.
"She was just gone. She was lying dead. She was not breathing. I looked into her face and she was gone."
The prosecution had alleged that Dalton deliberately left his 38-year-old wife to die. She died as a result of inhaling her own blood.
The following Wednesday, Dalton went shopping - buying an electric saw, a bow saw and dust sheets.
Dalton, 35, from Kingston, Surrey, admitted killing his wife and preventing the burial of a corpse but denied he murdered her.
The jury found him guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of lack of intent (to murder). They took less than an hour to reach their verdict.
Dalton was jailed for two years for the manslaughter and three years for preventing the burial, to run consecutively.