Networked Knowledge - Media Report

[This edited version of the report has been prepared by Dr Robert N Moles]

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On 28 February 2008 Russell Jenkins of the Times Online reported “Housewife given 30-year jail sentence for trying to kill husband with anti-freeze”.

He said a judge today jailed a wife who attempted to murder her husband with anti-freeze for 30 years to deter others from choosing a means of death more “lethal and cruel than a bullet”. Kate Knight, 28, described as a bored and lonely housewife living in her own fantasy world, rocked backwards and forwards in shock at Stafford Crown Court as she realised that she will have to spend the next 15 to 20 years behind bars. The mother of a nine-year-old son had set out to murder her husband Lee, 37, early in 2005 to claim his £140,000 life insurance and pay off mounting debts. She researched a number of methods, including an ecstasy overdose and employing a hitman, before settling on anti-freeze which contains the poison ethylene glycol.

She slipped anti-freeze in her husband’s takeaway curry bought to celebrate their wedding anniversary but he complained of the “tinny” taste. She then put it in his red wine to mask the taste. He was rushed to hospital with stomach cramps and spent ten weeks in a coma emerging to a “living death”, blind, deaf, partially paralysed and with permanent kidney damage requiring dialysis three times a week. A probation report concluded that Mrs Knight, who was isolated in the family home in Meir, near Stoke, had turned her idle musings into a bizarre and catastrophic reality.

Judge Simon Tonking told Knight: “Whether you administered the poison in food or in wine or in both is of no significance: the fact is you did administer it with lethal intent and devastating consequences. “As a result of your actions, Lee Knight suffered terrible illness, becoming increasingly unwell and then losing first the use of his kidneys and then his sight and hearing. “The devastation which you have brought to his life was apparent to everyone who saw him give evidence in this case, yet while he did so there was little, if any, sign of remorse on your part”.

Mrs Knight sobbed as the judge told her that her son Jack had effectively lost his family through her actions, and that she will completely miss out on his passage from childhood, through adolescence to adulthood. The judge was careful to explain each of the aggravating features in the case, notably that it was done for financial gain and that it entailed a large degree premeditation “of the most callous kind”. He also highlighted her feigned ignorance and concern which belied a complete lack of mercy as she watched her husband’s health deteriorate in the first week of April, “a week in which you watched your work take its course in the hope and expectation that he would die”.

The judge told Mrs Knight that anti-freeze administered in sufficient quantities was as “lethal as a firearm”. “What is more, where death is caused, death from a bullet is usually swift, whereas the mechanism of death caused by anti-freeze is likely to be slow, as anti-freeze crystallises in the body. Not only that, where death is not caused, the effects of anti-freeze poisoning can be serious, if not more so, than the effects of a bullet which does not meet its mark”. Concluding his remarks, the judge said that anyone considering the use of such a cruel means of death should be left in no doubt that doing so would inevitably be met by a sentence of “significant severity”.

Earlier Michael Gledhill, QC, for the defence, said that cases of poisoning conjured up the Victorian and Edwardian era. Few come before the courts in the modern age. He described Mrs Knight as a woman who had no idea of the “dreadful, dreadful consequences, almost of living death” she had inflicted on her husband. The barrister quoted from the probation officer’s pre-sentence report which suggested that Mrs Knight was living in a world of fantasy. “It is my belief that fantasy played an integral part in the commission of this offence. An idea that began in the idle musings of a bored and lonely housewife formed into a realistic plan to poison her husband”.

Mrs Knight had confided some extent of her murderous plan to a near neighbour, Sarah Johnson. Mr Gledhill said it was unfortunate that she not reacted with an adequate degree of censure. The judge explained that because of the offences were committed on the “cusp” of the introduction of new sentencing guidelines under the Criminal Justice Act 2003, she will be sentenced under the old law. She will only become eligible for parole after serving between half and two thirds of her sentence. Meanwhile Mr Knight, formerly a team leader on the JCB factory floor, is trying to rebuild his life with his young son and is being cared for full-time by his mother. He is awaiting a kidney transplant from his brother.

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