Cheating husband jailed for 17 years for wife's murder

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/06/alan-evans-guilty-wife-murder-fall

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A cheating husband who murdered his wife after she found out about his affair, and who attempted to get away with his crime by pretending she had fallen down the stairs, has been jailed for at least 17 years.

Alan Evans, 35, is believed to have brutally assaulted his wife, Louise Evans, at their home in Worcestershire before pushing her down the stairs and smothering her.

He tried to make it look as if his wife had fallen accidentally by placing a skipping rope near her body and an uncoiled vacuum cleaner hose at the top of the stairs.

Evans, a welder, had ended his affair with Amanda Chadwick, a teacher at his children's school, shortly before the killing but they began the relationship again after his wife's death and it only ended when he was arrested.

He claimed in court that he loved his wife – a care assistant with whom he had three daughters – and never laid hands on her in the 18 years of their marriage. But a jury at Worcester crown court took less than five hours to find him guilty of murder.

Jailing him for life, Mr Justice Hickinbottom told Evans he would spend 17 years in prison before he could be considered for parole, and described his crime as "callous" and his attempt to escape justice as "grotesque".

The victim's mother, Judy Bollen, said in an impact statement that she faced the prospect of explaining to the couple's children what had happened. "How do we tell three little girls that their daddy murdered their mummy?" she asked.

Expressing disbelief that Evans rekindled his affair after the murder, she said: "How could he? I just thought: Louise is still in a mortuary and he is starting a life with that woman who hurt her so much."

Ms Evans' body was found at the foot of the stairs at the couple's semi-detached house in Kidderminster in the early hours of 10 July 2012. Evans claimed he had been sleeping on the sofa at the time and had woken up to find his wife in a crumpled heap. "I walked into the hallway and I found my wife at the bottom of the stairs," he said. "I got hold of her, trying to wake her up. I didn't want to believe Louise was dead."

But the story did not make sense to detectives. A neighbour reported hearing Ms Evans, 32, scream "Oh my fucking god!" more than two hours before the alarm was raised. And her 46 injuries did not tally with a simple fall. She had suffered a broken eye socket and facial bruises that suggested she was assaulted before she died.

When detectives looked into the couple's lives, they found Evans had had a four-month affair with Chadwick, 30. He sent her around 6,700 text messages between March and July 2012. One she received in June read: "You know how much I love you and I always will."

Chadwick, who was also married, sent back about 5,350 messages. The pair checked into budget hotels where they would have sex, and also met in their homes while their partners were at work.

Ms Evans had become suspicious that her husband was having an affair and confronted Chadwick and her husband. Evans ended the relationship with Chadwick by text message around a week before his wife died.

However, two days before the murder Evans told her he was getting a new secret sim card so that Chadwick could contact him if she wanted to. The pair began seeing each other again after the killing and the relationship only finally ended when Evans was arrested in February.

Detectives believe that Evans assaulted his wife and then probably threw her down the stairs before smothering her. The skipping rope and vacuum hose were props to make it look as though she had tripped.

In the witness box Evans said he loved his wife, had no reason to kill her, and had been an idiot to have had an affair. He said the days before her death had been happy ones. They had gone for walks together and enjoyed a meal out.

"On the night my wife died we were happy," he said. "We had put our previous problems behind us. It was a normal night. We watched TV together, we had a cuddle. The affair was over."

He told jurors the couple had been looking forward to rebuilding their marriage, to a holiday together in Spain, and to fulfilling their dream of running a bed-and-breakfast enterprise.

Evans claimed he loved his wife "with all my heart". He said: "She was beautiful, she was outgoing, friendly, kind." He claimed the prosecution case was based on the fact that he had an affair. "My wife's injuries are consistent with a fall down the stairs and I have never raised a finger to my wife – this trial is based on whether or not I have had an affair."

He accepted that at one point he had loved both women, but said he ended the relationship with Chadwick when he realised that cheating on his wife was a mistake. Explaining why he later resumed the relationship, he told the court: "After I had lost my wife, I had lost everything I had in the world. I had to try and live some kind of normal life. One night we [Evans and Chadwick] were just talking for hours and hours and one thing lead to another."

In court Chadwick said she was deeply upset when the affair ended. She told how Ms Evans had confronted her with her suspicions of her husband's infidelity and threatened to tell her school about it.

Chadwick was forced to read out a text she sent to Evans at that time: "That fat bitch is going into school to complain about me to the headteacher and says she's going to do whatever it takes to lose my job and make my life hell."