By Phil Coleman

Last updated at 14:02, Wednesday, 19 November 2008

Farmer Robert Wilson repeatedly lied so that he could “get away with murdering his wife”, a court heard.

The allegation was put bluntly to the 41-year-old in a tense exchange at Carlisle Crown Court as prosecuting QC Brian Cummings cross-examined the defendant.

The QC confronted Wilson over occasions in the weeks after his wife’s death when he had slept with other women.

The farmer insisted he had been “heartbroken” by the death of his wife Jane on December 1 last year.

A week and a half after the tragedy, said Mr Cummings, Wilson had sex with his lover Kathy McNeil in the matrimonial bed, just feet away from the wardrobe containing his wife’s wedding dress.

Mr Cummings said: “How does this square with having true feelings for your wife - having sex with another woman in her bed less than two weeks after you killed her?”

Wilson replied: “That’s how I got my comfort.”

On the New Year’s night after Jane Wilson died, said Mr Cummings, the defendant slept, again in the matrimonial bed, with Michelle Dodd, a woman who helped out at the farm.

Mr Cummings suggested that Wilson had told the jury a “sob story” and that he had no true love or respect for his late wife.

Wilson insisted: “I had loads of love and respect for my wife. I was so lonely afterwards.

“I want back what I had and yes I have slept with other females. I don’t like being on my own.”

Earlier during questioning by Mr Cummings, the QC said to the defendant: “You are a very able and manipulative liar are you not?”

Wilson’s reply was: “Yes, to keep my private life private.”

Mr Cummings countered: “And to get away with murder.”

Wilson denied that his was the case.

In court yesterday, Wilson insisted his wife Jane knew about his relationship with a 48-year-old barmaid he met on a stag weekend in Spain.

The prosecution insists that Mrs Wilson knew nothing of her husband’s affair.

Wilson told the jury his 53-year-old wife had even suggested that he take his lover, Kathy McNeil, with him on a luxury holiday.

For more than five hours, defence QC Joanna Greenberg quizzed him about his marriage and love life.

Mrs Wilson died on December 1 last year, her head and body crushed beneath a tractor driven by her husband. Police initially believed that the tragedy, at the couple’s Kirkandrews-on-Eden farm, near Carlisle, was an accident.

According to the prosecution, Wilson staged the accident, ensuring Mrs Wilson died when he needed her to: as the two halves of his life – that with his wife and that with his “secret” lover – were about to collide.

It is alleged he staged the accident either to kill Jane Wilson or to cover up the fact that he had murdered her in some other way.

Wilson denies murder.

In his testimony, the defendant gave a detailed account of meeting Mrs McNeil, 48, during a “stag do” in Spain with friends in October 2006.

He said he had gone into the bar where she was working because he didn’t want to join his friends at a lap dancing club next door.

The trial had earlier heard Mrs McNeil describe how he walked into the bar and ordered Baileys with ice and started chatting.

Recalling the second night they talked, in the same bar, Wilson said: “I can’t remember much of what the conversation was about. If I drink I don’t remember a lot of what I say.

“The lads went back to the lap dancing club, and I thought I’d just go back in there [where Mrs McNeil worked]: it was conversation. It was a bit of fun and no harm was getting done, I thought.

“She was talking about how she used to go here and there in Rolls Royces and now she was working in a back street bar next to a lap-dancing club. She looked out of place in that bar. The way she was dressed, you could tell that her clothes were good quality. She was draped in gold.”

He admitted lying to Mrs McNeil, telling her his wife had died of cancer, 14 months before Jane Wilson actually died in Cumbria. He and Mrs McNeil exchanged phone numbers, and their relationship continued through calls.

“There was a bit of flirting on the phone, but nothing serious,” said the defendant.

Explaining his decision to fly back to Spain to see Mrs McNeil, he said: “Before I had booked the flights, she had made it clear what was on offer: I didn’t go over to Spain for nothing.”

He spoke of visiting Mrs McNeil in Spain, making five trips in 2007, saying their relationship became physical. He insisted that he had no interest in Mrs McNeil’s money, even though he helped her pay for a lawyer to hasten her divorce settlement.

Earlier in the trial, Wilson had insisted his wife Jane had a low sex drive. He admitted that he had slept with another woman, at the end of 2005, but he said his wife knew about that relationship.

Wilson claimed his wife was happy for him to have sex with other woman, including Mrs McNeil, who he insisted his wife knew about from shortly after they met.

Wilson told the court that his wife, a rural post-woman who sometimes delivered mail to their home address, had known about the affectionate cards sent to him by Mrs McNeil from Spain.

He then spoke about a luxury £15,000 holiday he had enjoyed with Mrs McNeil in the Maldives last year.

Before describing how it came about, Wilson said he and his wife had always gone on expensive holidays. He recalled going on a horse riding holiday to Colorado in the United States,

“It was always something special when we took a holiday,” he said.

During 2007, it had been his intention to treat his wife to a surprise holiday and he chose the Maldives. He said he booked the two-week luxury break in both his and his wife’s names. It was just two weeks before they were due to leave that he told his wife about it, he said.

Asked how Jane Wilson had reacted to the news, he replied: “She just shook her head and said: ‘You twerp. I’ve got a show coming up.’ I said it was September and that the shows had all finished.”

Wilson said his wife had wanted to compete in a horse show in Langholm so she could once again beat her horse-riding friend Denise Richardson – something she’d done earlier that year.

“She wanted to do it again,” said Wilson. That night, or the following day, said Wilson, his wife said to him: “If you go [on the holiday], take Kathy with you as well. Nobody will know about it.”

Had he wanted to secretly take Kathy McNeil on a holiday he would had booked it through a travel agent other than the one he normally used in Wigton, he said.

Wilson said that his relationship with Mrs McNeil had been physical until Christmas of last year, but after then it was just business: she had agreed to act as his agent to find a property in France.

The defendant rejected the prosecution claim that he had killed his wife in order make a new life for himself with Kathy McNeil, who was due to visit him on over the weekend when Jane Wilson died.

He said: “Kathy was good in a physical way, but as to being a couple, we had nothing in common. I was down to earth, and liked my animals and the farm and she liked her expensive clothes and going out to posh places.

“We hardly had a thing in common. The only thing we had in common was the physical thing. She wouldn’t be happy on a farm in the middle of nowhere, with horses, and old togs. Everything had to be designer clothes. I was referred to as a bit of rough.”

Wilson’s defence QC Joanna Greenberg asked him: “Did you want your wife dead.” Wilson replied: “I didn’t want my wife dead.”

Wilson has already admitted lying to Mrs McNeil in an attempt to “fob her off” when she planned to visit him over the weekend when his wife died in Cumbria.

He was asked about Mrs McNeil’s claim that during a later visit he had told her his wife had thrown herself under the tractor.

Miss Greenberg said: “Was there any discussion about Jane’s death?”

Wilson replied: “That was when I came clean. I said Jane hadn’t died of cancer. I said she’d died in a horrific tractor accident at the farm.

“I didn’t tell her when the accident happened. She asked how it happened and I said that I didn’t know. One minute she was there, and the next I didn’t know. I said I didn’t know whether she’d slipped, or stumbled,”

Had he ever suggested his wife had committed suicide, asked the QC? “Not at all,” said Wilson.

He was also questioned about the woman he was found in bed with when police arrested him in April. Wilson explained that he had known Michelle Dodd – described as looking like a younger version of his late wife – for three or four years. She had occasionally worked on the farm.

He had been invited to a New Year’s evening party a few weeks after his wife died at the house of his friend Jimmy Young but he had refused. He felt in no mood to celebrate, he said.

Michelle Dodd had stayed at Mr Young’s house that night. The following day, he had met Mr Young at his house, drinking wine and gin.

Miss Dodd arrived at the house later, and he offered her a lift home, inviting her into his home for a coffee on the way back.

He said: “We sat and talked for three or four hours. She stopped over that night – in my bed.”

By the time he was arrested in April, he and Miss Dodd were seeing each other four or five times a week. She has continued to visit him in prison while he has been on remand, he said.

Wilson also testified about why he had invented a story about having cancer. He said he made up the story because he wanted a reason to escape from a job that was taking over his life.

He first told colleagues he had contracted lung cancer in October 2004. At the time, he was a roster manager with Story Rail.

“The job was taking over my life totally,” said Wilson. “I was on call seven days a week, 24/7.”

He said he hoped to leave his job before Christmas and find other work but his plan to lie as an excuse for leaving had got out of hand. He said that he had never intended for the story about his supposed illness to become public knowledge. He insisted his wife knew about the deception from an early stage.

Recalling a discussion they had about it, he said: “She said that’s over the top – you’ve gone too far with it this time.”

Wilson went on to say that both he and his wife had known Fred Story and his wife well. He regularly went on a lads’ night out with Mr Story and other male colleagues.

The defendant told the court: “I ended up digging myself in a deeper hole.”

The trial continues.

First published at 13:23, Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk