Man found guilty of decapitating cheating partner
A crane driver who chopped off his partner’s head and tried to flush it down the toilet after she admitted sleeping with other men faces life in jail.
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A crane driver who chopped off his partner’s head and tried to flush it down the toilet after she admitted sleeping with other men faces life in jail.
Dempsey Nibbs, 69, decapitated his partner of 30 years Judith Nibbs, 60, with a kitchen knife - believing she “was not the housewife she used to be”, a court heard. Nibbs had claimed he thought she was a snake and was “defending himself”.
On Tuesday a jury at the Old Bailey found him guilty of murder after hearing he had shown no signs of mental illness in the aftermath of the killing.
Mrs Nibbs, who took her partner’s name despite not being married, had stayed at their home in Hoxton, East London, to look after their daughter Lauren, 27, who is autistic.
But after Lauren went to a care home, Mrs Nibbs worked for Hackney Council’s meals on wheels.
Their other child, son Kirk, 30, said his father thought Mrs Nibbs “was not the housewife that she had used to be, that she had become more liberal in her outlook and had begun going out with her friends from work”, prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC told the trial. After Nibbs was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2012, he became suspicious his partner was cheating on him. In a row on April 7 that year, she admitted seeing other men, taunting Nibbs by saying: “I have had sex eight times.”
The next day, the mother of five, originally of Kirkham, Lancashire, told colleagues: “If I’m not in Friday, I might be dead.”
On April 10, Nibbs battered her on the head with an iron bar and cut off her head with a kitchen knife before failing to flush it down the toilet.
Nibbs called the police and tried to kill himself with the knife and a shotgun as officers arrived.
He told the court: “When I confronted her I wouldn’t let her get the better of me,” he said. He said he put the metal bar in her mouth to stop her screaming so as not to disturb the neighbours.
The defendant went on: “All of a sudden she just let go and I took the bar out of her mouth. Her eyes rolled over in her head and she was dead.”
Nibbs, who worked for Balfour Beatty for many years, will be sentenced on a date yet to be fixed.
Daily Mail