Man whose terminally ill wife 'begged' him to kill her is now prosecuted for murder

A British pensioner who stands accused of murdering his terminally ill wife told the court how she 'cried and begged' him to kill her for weeks leading up to her death.

Expat David Hunter, 75, described the emotionally agonising final months with his late wife Janice whom he helped end her suffering.

He explained to the Cypriot court how his teenage sweetheart, who he'd been married to for 52 years, had been reduced to wearing nappies, was covered in sores and skin lesions and had lost the ability to stand due to having blood cancer.

David, a retired miner, was forced to look after her himself at home due to Covid restrictions. He couldn't do anything but watch her deteriorate in front of him.

Breaking down in tears, David told the court how he'd killed his wife after she 'begged' him to do it in the final weeks of her life.

He explained to the court: "I don't remember a lot of the last day. I went to make a cup of coffee and she started crying."

He went over to the kettle and gripped the bench for support while his wife sobbed next door.

"The next thing I knew I put my hands on her,' he said, wiping his tears from his eyes. "When it was finished, she was a grey colour. She didn't look like my wife, and it was the first time I cried in many years."

He said he killed her by standing by her side and putting his left hand on her nose and right hand over her mouth.

Prosecutor Andreas Hadjikyrou suggested that his wife had put up a struggle and scratched him during the act, to which David responded: "She never struggled, she never moved. You are talking nonsense."

Mr Hadjikyrou also suggested that David had planned to kill her without her knowledge. David responded: "I would never in a million years take my wife's life if she had not asked me."

The pensioner said he didn't inform doctors about his 74-year-old wife's wishes to die because she had asked him not to, for fear that she would be taken into hospital.

He also didn't tell their daughter as he didn't want to 'worry' her.

He told Paphos District Court: "She was lying down, she was in pain, suffering. I w

ould do anything to help her. The last thing on my mind was to take her life. The last thing."

Mrs Hunter couldn't move and was 'stuck in the house' due to diarrhoea, a side effect from her medication that caused her to need nappies for the last three years.

"She cried, she couldn't do nothing, she couldn't move," he said.

"I felt so helpless and hopeless that I couldn't do anything for her. For five or six weeks before she died she was asking me to help her, she was asking me more every day.

"In the last week she was crying and begging me. Every day she asked me a bit more intensely to do it.

"I didn't want to do it after 57 years together. I really didn't want to do it."

The trial is set to continue on 23 May.