By Phil Coleman and Nick Griffiths

Last updated at 16:00, Saturday, 15 November 2008

The Cumbrian farmer charged with murder rushed “in distress” from the dock at Carlisle Crown Court as a lawyer read out his account of how his wife died.

Robert Wilson and Jane Wilson

Defence QC Joanna Greenberg told the judge in the case that Robert Wilson was too upset to continue listening to the evidence, which had just moved on to the extent of his wife’s head injury.

Jane Wilson, 53, died on December 1 last year in what police initially thought had been a tractor accident.

“He’s apparently very distressed and doesn’t want to listen to this part of the evidence,” said Miss Greenberg yesterday morning, on the ninth day of the trial.

The Honourable Mr Justice David Clarke QC said that Wilson, 41, could be excused from hearing the evidence, a transcript of what he told police after Mrs Wilson died.

The prosecution say he staged a tractor accident at the Kirkandrews-on-Eden farm where he lived with Mrs Wilson, 53, either to kill her or to cover the fact that he murdered her in another way.

A rural postwoman and talented horse rider, Mrs Wilson suffered massive injuries, her head and body crushed beneath the wheels of a tractor driven by her husband.

In court, the jury heard what the defendant told police about the incident, which he said happened as he and his wife were mucking out their cow barn.

At first, as he drove into the barn with bedding for the cattle on the tractor’s grab arm, Mrs Wilson had been standing out of the way, he said.

He described feeling a “slight bump” as he manoeuvred the tractor, making him think he had caught the barn’s wall or roof.

So he knocked the tractor into reverse, at which point it shot back, said Wilson.

It was then that he noticed his wife was not there. He switched off the tractor, clambered out and then saw Mrs Wilson on the ground.

The last time he’d seen her, said Wilson, she was standing directly in front of him. From inside the tractor cab, which was enclosed in glass, he heard nothing, he said.

“I felt a bump,” he said. “I didn’t know what it was.”

He agreed that on every other occasion they had done that particular job Mrs Wilson had kept out of the way. They followed the same mucking-out practice three times every week.

He described finding his wife’s body lying in front of the tractor’s front wheel.

Wilson went on to recall for police the extent of his wife’s head injury, saying: “I would not want to see it again. I can picture that face; that doesn’t go away.”

He continued: “I just felt physically sick. I knew she was dead. There was no way there could be any life.”

It was at this point that Wilson rushed from the dock and into an ante-room, followed immediately by the court’s male dock officer.

The jury then heard from Andrew Davidson, a forensic scientist with specialist knowledge of blood pattern analysis at crime scenes.

He said his findings, based on photos of the accident scene and Mrs Wilson’s body, were not consistent with the account of what happened given by the defendant.

Commenting on the quantity of blood at the scene, Mr Davidson said: “This is a severe head injury. In my experience, cases of such severe head injury result in extensive blood loss.”

Joanna Greenberg QC, for Wilson, quoted the defence blood expert Dr Duncan Woods, who said conclusions drawn from the lack of blood stains at the scene should be treated with caution.

This was because it could not be established how much of the relevant evidence may not have been visible or recorded in the photos of the barn after the incident.

Asked if it was right that any conclusion based on the small amount of visible blood in photos of the barn, which was not treated as a crime scene, should be treated with caution, Mr Davidson said: “Yes, you have to be cautious.”

Dr Woods was later called to give evidence. He was asked his observations on the manner in which prosecution witness Alison Armour, a Home Office pathologist, reached her conclusions. She had commented on the lack of blood at the scene.

Dr Woods told the jury: “In my view she’s attached significance to failure to see blood in these images. I’m not convinced significance should be attached because you have got no means of knowing the extent to which the blood is not visible in these images.”

The trial continues.

First published at 08:58, Saturday, 15 November 2008
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk