By Phil Coleman

Last updated 14:38, Thursday, 20 November 2008

Murder accused Robert Wilson had sex with other women in his marital bed twice during the month after his wife died.

Robert Wilson and Jane Wilson

The bed was just feet away from the wardrobe containing the dress his wife wore when they married.

Defending his actions, the 41-year-old farmer, who denies murdering his wife Jane, told Carlisle Crown Court yesterday: “That was how I got my comfort.”

The prosecution says he was leading a double life, secretly lavishing money and attention on his lover Kathy McNeil behind his wife’s back.

He staged a tractor accident either to kill his wife or to disguise the fact that he’d murdered her in some other way, it is alleged.

The trigger for the murder, says the prosecution, was Wilson’s realisation that the two halves of his life – that with his 53-year-old wife and that with his “secret” lover – were about to collide.

Throughout most of yesterday, prosecuting QC Brian Cummings challenged Wilson’s claim that his wife had known about his lover and his insistence that he had loved his late wife.

Asked if he was heartbroken by his wife’s death, Wilson said: “Very much so.” He said he remained heartbroken.

Even after the death of Jane Wilson, said Mr Cummings, her husband manipulated the situation in order to delay having to pay for a new horse box he’d bought for his wife.

The QC said: “At a time when most people would be in a state of emotional collapse, you were manipulating the situation for the sake of £45,000” said Mr Cummings.

He said the defendant lied about his bank account being frozen after her death.

Wilson said: “I didn’t know how I was supposed to sort everything out.”

Mr Cummings said: “Nobody tells you to lie.”

The barrister suggested that lying came naturally to the defendant, who replied: “Sometimes.”

Mr Cummings asked why, if he cared about his wife, had he continued to phone Kathy McNeil over the period when his wife died, up to and including the day of the funeral?

Wilson said: “She was someone I could talk to, a way to shut out what had happened. The conversation would not be ‘How are you doing?’ and ‘How are you coping?’ She wasn’t part of the real world.

“She didn’t know anything about the life I was in.”

Wilson met Mrs McNeil, 48, in Spain, in October 2006, more than a year before his wife’s death last year.

In an earlier interview with police, Wilson had said of the blonde barmaid: “She was quite posh, out of my league. I fancied my chances with her so, yes, I spun her a line.”

The comment was a reference to his lie that his wife had died months earlier of cancer, even though Jane Wilson did not die until more than a year later in Cumbria.

That deception, said Mr Cummings, was a “classic Robert Wilson lie,” designed to make the person feel sorry for him. Wilson accepted he had also lied to Mrs McNeil about a fictional childhood sweetheart, who he said died from a brain tumour.

That too was designed to engender sympathy, and stop Mrs McNeil asking any more questions, said the QC.

“This is how you tell your lies,” said Mr Cummings. “They are lies whose nature prevents the other person making further inquiries.

“The biggest lie was your performance on the night of Jane’s death – a lot of apparent distress, designed to prevent anyone asking too many questions.”

Wilson shook his head.

In earlier evidence, Mr Cummings confronted Wilson over occasions in the weeks after his wife’s death when he slept with other women.

Three days after the funeral, Wilson tried to initiate sex with Mrs McNeil in a car in Yorkshire.

The defendant challenged that claim, saying he only wanted somebody to hold.

On December 12, a week-and-a-half after the tragedy, said Mr Cummings, the defendant had sex with Mrs McNeil in the matrimonial bed, at The Croft, where he had lived with his wife until her death.

The bed was just feet away from the wardrobe containing the wedding dress Jane Wilson wore seven years earlier when she married the defendant.

Mr Cummings asked: “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 said that was how he found comfort. He went on: “You tell me: is there a book sat there with a list of rules, saying this is how you grieve. “Nobody tells you how to grieve.”

Mr Cummings replied: “Do you need a book to tell you not to have sex in the marital bed within a fortnight of killing your wife?”

Wilson countered: “It wasn’t a stranger: it was someone I had been sleeping with for the last 12 months.”

Mr Cummings questioned how the defendant could have sex in the aftermath of the horrific scene he had witnessed on the night when his wife died.

Wilson said: “I just wanted to be close to someone. I was so, so alone.You want something to fill that emptiness in you. If that’s wrong, I hold my hands up.

“I’m guilty of it.”

The QC said Wilson had carried on as he had before the tragedy.

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

Mr Cummings suggested Wilson was telling the jury a “sob story,” commenting: “You have no true love or respect for your wife.”

Wilson replied: “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.”

The court has already heard that Mrs Wilson, a keen horse rider, died on December 1 last year at The Croft, the farm in Kirkandrews-on-Eden near Carlisle where she and Wilson had lived.

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

Wilson’s said: “Yes to keep my private life private.”

Mr Cummings countered: “And to get away with murder.” Wilson denied that this was the case.

The QC said that Wilson needed the jury to believe that his wife was happy for him to sleep with other women and that she had known about his lover, Mrs McNeil.

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

Earlier this week,Wilson told the jury his wife had turned down the chance of the £15,000 two-week trip because it had clashed with a horse show she planned to go to in September last year.

Asked about this, Wilson rejected the suggestion that he had always planned to take Mrs McNeil on that holiday.

He said he planned to fly from Spain because he had hoped to drive through France, where he and his wife had been planning to retire.

Why had he flown back to Spain with Kathy McNeil after the holiday if she was just somebody he just wanted to have sex with, asked Mr Cummings?

Wilson said: “That was me being a gentleman, and saying ‘I’ll help you with your things at the airport. Any time I am with a female, I’m a gentleman: I behave properly.”

Wilson again insisted that he had only lied in order to keep his private life private.

“Everyone’s entitled to a private life,” he said.

Mr Cummings retorted: “Unless there is a killing involved.”

He went on to admit to having another affair, again while he was in Spain on another stag do, but this time in September 2005.

He could only remember that the groom’s first name was Alan, he said.

“I didn’t really know Alan at all,” said Wilson. “We were all businessmen from out of Carlisle.. ”At this point, Wilson turned to Mr Justice David Clark and asked: “Is it really necessary to give these names out?”

The judge said it was.

Wilson then listed the names of some of those he said had been on the trip, including accountant David Allen, car dealer Richard Dixon, his brother, and businessman Ged Crooks.

There were about 27 people there, he told the court.

The later stag do, in October 2006 when he met Kathy McNeil, had been for a man called Carl Thompson, from Wigton, said the defendant.

Wilson claimed that his wife had lied with him in order to cover up their private life.

The prosecution went on to suggest that in the months before his wife died, Wilson had embarked on a lifestyle that showed he had a taste for “exotic living.”

The QC cited Wilson’s liking for fine wines, foreign travel, club-class air trips, and a race horse which cost £25,000 a year to keep and train.

“I suggest that you had embarked on a way of life that you just didn’t have the means to sustain,” said Mr Cummings.

He said if Wilson had divorced, his assets would have been worth £190,000, compared £910,000 in the event of his wife’s death.

Wilson said: “If the roles had been reversed, Jane would have been in the same position as I am in now.

“If it had been me who died in that accident, we would have been in this court and it would have been Jane standing here. Instead of Sharon and Lee [his wife’s children from her first marriage], it would have been Kathy making accusations.

“There’s nothing sinister in it.”

The trial continues.