That woman who smashed her husband's head in with a hammer set to be released

Jimmy Nail needs to wear a helmet at all times.

Sounds a very tough case to adjudicate on.  She claims manslaughter but she took the hammer out of her handbag, so it was clearly pre-meditated.  But then both her sons are campaigning for her release, so he probably was a right thug.

We have Women's Football on BBC4 tonight, nearly as bad as this

Life is getting harder and harder for us men

hitting you with hammers & feckin up Parliament to the point of distraction. Not to mention female goalkeepers!

They claim he controlled her yet they were living apart at the time and were working on getting back together.

Some quotes from a BBC article at the time of her original trial:

She told a suicide team who had found her the following day at Beachy Head: "If I can't have him, no-one can."

She had been living apart from Richard, her husband of 31 years, but she kept a diary of his movements as she became increasingly suspicious he was seeing other women.

On one occasion, she even counted his Viagra tablets to see when they appeared to have been used.

"I drove to Kingston but the car park was closed and I didn't know what time it opened... so I decided to drive to Beachy Head."

When she arrived, she called her cousin to admit the killing and repeated the admission to a suicide team and chaplain who were called to help her.

The court heard she told them: "I killed him with a hammer. I hit him lots of times... If I can't have him, no-one can."

Sounds like she was the jealous, controlling one.


R.I.P. Richard Challen.

it can be a manslaughter charge, voluntary manslaughter opposed to involuntary manslaughter.

Murder.  "If I can't have him, no one can."  If you repeatedly hit someone on the head with hammer there can only be one intention.  She should hang but instead gets the püssy pass.

I was at Beachy Head hoping to watch the Eastbourne Air Show when she "threatened" to throw herself off.  She was never really going to do it, and her presence there meant that all of the planes arriving and departing their slots were told to avoid the place! 

"He told me he'd take me back!" was what she said to one of the chaplains trying to talk her down as I passed.

Sounds like she clearly deserves the murder verdict then.  Wonder why her sons are standing by her?  It's not like it's any old murder.  It's the murder of their father.

He does sound like he's a right ****, but there are plenty of them out there!

Man saying "If I can't have her, no one can" who hit a woman who had left him 29 times with a hammer isn't likely to be let off regardless of the back story.

Still, if he'd committed adultery, maybe it's just our legal system being a bit "Brunei" about things and getting ahead of the curve.

Maybe the son's want her out so they can get their inheritance?

Totally agree, Just Checking.

There are numerous men in jail serving long sentences for almost the same crime, are they going to be set free?

She was jealous, that is all there is to it.  She held a responsible job as an office manager for the police, no less, so how can she say now she was not mentally fit.  It was a premeditated murder, how on earth can they say it was manslaughter? 

The things they are saying about her husband, apart from the adultery, are minor and if they are to allow women to kill their husbands for it then where will it all end.

I didn't read at the time that the sons were that bothered about her.  I think one of them was not talking to her. You might be right about the inheritance, scandi.  If they did nothing for her then she could leave her money to other people.  I don't know where the law stands about not profiting from the death if you owned property jointly.  Did she inherit the marital home?

Maybe there is something to do with insurance policies paying out to people who murdered them?
It's all very odd. If he'd been beating her up or whatever and she snapped you could see a defence but she did this in cold blood because he'd left her.
The BBC of course seem to be totally on her side and are not mentioning key facts about the case, but you'd expect that these days..

- and if he was such a **** why was she so upset about their relationship ending, and why did she want him back?

The key factor appears to be 'her mental state'. Seems to justify anything now..

Apr 5, 2019 -- 12:04PM, Just Checking wrote:

- and if he was such a **** why was she so upset about their relationship ending, and why did she want him back?

Have you really never met anybody in a toxic relationship?  I've seen and heard loads of stories of people who are with ****s who still "love them" and "would do anything for them".  I've even met women who seem to need that kind of relationship.

It just shows how much you can't trust the BBC these days.

I got sucked in by their misleading propaganda.

Does appear to set a worrying precedent where you can hammer someone's skull up to 30 times and be out in 8 years, don't think she should be getting any of his money any how, neither the children who campaigned for her release, where these quotes about 'if I can't have him then nobody can' presented in court?

This makes no sense at all

She told a suicide team who had found her the following day at Beachy Head: "If I can't have him, no-one can."

She had been living apart from Richard, her husband of 31 years, but she kept a diary of his movements as she became increasingly suspicious he was seeing other women.

So she was jealous he was not living with her..yes

But she claims she suffered years of abuse....well if she had...then surely she should have been glad he left.????????

She has been let off(although she has served some sentence) because she is a women

If a man did this to his wife would he be treated so leniently...I doubt it?

Hard to see where the injustice is.

Ruth Ellis put six bullets into someone because she thought he was cheating on her

She was hanged

I don't think we should bring back hanging

But we still need justice

Talking about Ruth Ellis reminded me of the following...  My wife used to do some charity work which involved visiting old people, taking them to church, and having a cup of tea with them etc.  The person she visited most was this old Geordie fellow who'd lost both his legs and was confined to a wheelchair.  He was keen football fan so she invited him round to our house to watch the Champions League final.  The old fellow kept banging on about Jackie Milburn and how football wasn't what it used to be.  Milito scored a brace for Inter which was a good result for me.  Anyhow he used to tell my wife that he had a secret that he couldn't bring himself to tell her.  Then one day he did.  In a jealous rage he killed his fiancee, then lay down on the train tracks to kill himself.  The train ran over his legs but he survived.  At the time the death penalty still stood and he said his life was spared because he'd lost his legs.  We verified his story as there was an archived version of it on the internet somewhere.  She never saw him again and he's since died

then lay down on the train tracks to kill himself. The train ran over his legs

Clydebank that sounds terrible, I shall resist a laugh, still it saved his life

There's lots of women out there who would love some one to do it .they would do it themselves if they was sure they could see coronation Street in their prison cell

There's lots of women out there who would love some one to do it .they would do it themselves if they was sure they could see coronation Street in their prison cell