Is like this any help?
You killed your wife... then went on holiday
ByNorth Wales Live
17:00, 5 OCT 2004
PENSIONER John Ernest Jones killed his fourth wife because she was too drunk to go to Benidorm.
The furious 70-year-old from Rhyl battered his 55-year-old alcoholic wife Bronwen around the head and tried to strangle her.
He then left her in a chair and went to bed.
It was the second time Bronwen had been too drunk to go on holiday to Spain.
In the early hours of the following morning, Jones took a taxi to Manchester Airport and caught his flight to the sun.
He claimed she was alive when he left - and the prosecution at Mold Crown Court said that may well have been the case.
But by then Jones had already inflicted the injuries that killed her, said prosecutor Christopher Vosper QC.
Jones was asked by shocked detectives why he had not arranged for someone to check on his wife.
He lied and said he asked his sister to check.
He also said he was pressed for time because he wanted his breakfast and the taxi was due to pick him up.
Jones claimed he loved her, had kissed her on the forehead and told her to take care.
Three days later her body was found in the same chair in the lounge of their flat in Brighton Road, Rhyl - by the window cleaner.
By then Jones was sunning himself in Benidorm, staying at the same hotel where he and his wife had been twice a year on previous holidays.
When told by a holiday company rep there was a message for him to contact police, he cried and said his wife had died.
He returned home at the end of the week and was promptly arrested by police at the airport.
Jones, 69 at the time of the attack, was due to go on trial yesterday on a murder charge but his guilty plea to manslaughter on the grounds of provocation was accepted by the prosecution.
He was jailed for six and a half years.
Jones, who walks with a crutch, was told by Mr Justice Curtis he had done a terrible thing.
"You attacked your wife while she was sitting in a chair. You hit her and the blood splatter pattern shows that she was sitting in her chair at the time of the assault or assaults," he told Jones.
"You then went away on holiday to Benidorm and your wife was not found for three days," said the judge.
"You must have known that she was in a bad way and needed help."
The judge said he had not used a weapon but he hit her with his hands and caused her to suffer a brain haemorrhage which probably caused her later death. He also tried to strangle her.
She was an established alcoholic. He drank far too much and was probably an alcoholic. There was a history of assaults by him upon her.
"The reason for your attack, I am satisfied, was that she had drunk so much that she was unfit to go on the holiday," he said..
Elwen Evans QC, defending, said her client was a lonely man suffering from ill-health who had killed the woman he loved.
She had been his registered carer but her pattern of drinking made it difficult for them both to lead a normal life-style.
