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Woman accused of murdering husband ‘said she should have stabbed him more’

A woman accused of murdering her husband said she “should have stabbed him more” as she was arrested, a court has heard.

Penelope Jackson, 66, is standing trial at Bristol Crown Court accused of the murder of her 78-year-old husband David at their home in Parsonage Road, Berrow, Somerset, on February 13 this year.

Jackson admits manslaughter but denies murder.

She was arrested after making a 999 call to police in which she told a call handler she had stabbed Mr Jackson “three times”.

In the call played to the jury, Jackson was asked not to stab Mr Jackson again, to which she replied, “Why?”

She then told the handler he was “not paid enough to deal with this” and said she had stabbed her husband once and then did it again when “he said I wouldn’t do it again”.

Penelope Jackson court case
David Jackson (Family Handout/PA)

She added that she had stabbed him three times.

Jackson told the handler: “I thought I’d got his heart, well I didn’t then, I got him twice in the abdomen.”

Body-worn footage from the officers who arrested Jackson following the call showed her telling them she “should have stabbed him more”.

In the footage, Jackson can be seen answering the door before being arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and put in handcuffs.

Directing the officers to the kitchen, where she said her husband was lying on the floor, Jackson said: “There’s nothing nasty in there. I admit it all.”

After an officer said to call an ambulance, Jackson can be heard on the footage saying “no, no, no, I should have stabbed him a bit more”.

A second piece of body-worn footage played to the jury saw Jackson arriving at a custody suite and telling officers she was “very sorry” for being a “nuisance”.

Jackson claims her husband was coercive and controlling and also physically violent towards her during their 24-year marriage.

She told the court on Tuesday that the couple first got together during her second marriage, to a man who had taken his own life after finding out about her affair with Mr Jackson.

Jackson told the jury during her evidence that after her second husband’s death, she married Mr Jackson and had to hide evidence of her previous life, including love letters and pictures, after fearing they would be destroyed following an incident where he took an axe to the couple’s furniture.

She told the court her youngest daughter from her second marriage called Mr Jackson “daddy” at his insistence, and added: “He was a brilliant daddy to her.”