"I wanted him to say: 'I am sorry, Pen.' He didn't, he just said: 'For God's sake you are pathetic, get on with it and go back to bed'," she said. Jackson claimed that on the night of the killing she had taken a kitchen knife to her bedroom intending to use it to take her own life, but instead walked into her husband's bedroom to speak to him. She added: "Other times I would be semi-conscious, and I would be on the bed or the floor and if he was really angry he would kick me."
"It would escalate, and he would shake me most of the time, he strangled me sometimes and I would go unconscious sometimes." The defendant said her husband was often violent following arguments. "It wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back but in was in the bundle."ĭescribing her marriage, Jackson said: "I didn't know if I was waking up to nice David or nasty David." "He had the contempt for me and he had been so rude and obnoxious in front of our daughter," she said.
In her evidence, Jackson said the row over bubble and squeak had tipped her over the edge. Mr and Mrs Potterton both said the row seemed to have blown over but added they had ended the call when the Jacksons began arguing over who had failed to charge their computer properly. The victim and defendant had eaten the meal with their daughter and son-in-law Isabelle and Tom Potterton over Zoom. There was a gasp from the public gallery, which was packed with David Jackson's extended family, when the verdict was read out.ĭuring the two-and-a-half week trial, the jury heard the Jacksons had rowed about the defendant serving bubble and squeak with a gourmet meal bought for them by their daughter during lockdown. On Friday, Jackson was found guilty at Bristol Crown Court of murder after nearly 11 hours of deliberations. Penelope Jackson has been found guilty of murder. Jackson jotted down a confession on a notepad by the telephone, and when she was arrested on suspicion of murder, replied: "It's murder now, not attempted murder? Oh good."īut she would later deny murder, pleading guilty to manslaughter saying she had lost control following years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her husband. She repeatedly refused to help the victim when the operator asked her to take steps such as apply pressure to the wound or throw him a towel to try and stem the bleeding.īodycam footage shows Penelope Jackson in the moments after she stabbed her husband. Sentencing her, judge Martin Picton said her attempt to paint her husband as an abuser had failed, and he criticised her for failing to show "a shred of remorse" over the murder. She was jailed for life this afternoon with a minimum term of 18 years at Bristol Crown Court. "He's an aggressive bully and I've had enough," she said.ĭavid Jackson was stabbed to death by his wife Penelope. In an 18-minute phone call to emergency services, Jackson told the call handler her husband, a retired lieutenant colonel, was "bleeding to death with any luck" on their kitchen floor.ĭuring her arrest she told police: "I should have stabbed him more. Penelope Jackson knifed her husband David, 78, a retired colonel, at their home in Parsonage Road, in Berrow, Somerset, on February 13 this year following a row over bubble and squeak being served during a birthday meal.