‘I stabbed my blind wife – but I’d be finished without her’
A 90-year-old man who allegedly stabbed his blind wife because he could not cope with caring for her told a court he would be ‘finished’ without her.
Edward Turpin is accused of trying to murder frail Joan Turpin, also 90, at their home in Ringshall Road, Orpington, Kent, last 22 September after decades of ‘happy marriage.’
Jurors heard that as Mrs Turpin’s health declined, she lost her sight, needed a catheter and was totally dependent on her husband.
Giving evidence in a grey jumper today assisted by a hearing aid, Turpin admitted he caused the four stab wounds to his wife’s chest and abdomen.
But he told the court: ‘Sir, it’s the last thing I would have ever wanted to do is harm my wife.
‘We’ve had 60 good years and that’s all I wanted to do was carry on life.’
Asked if he wanted to cause her ‘really serious harm’, he replied: ‘What’s the good of me causing my wife serious harm? I’ve got no one. No brothers, no sisters, no aunts, no uncles.
‘Without my wife I’m finished.’
The 90-year-old said he had ‘never’ hurt or wanted to hurt his wife before.
The couple are still married, jurors heard.
‘I phone her twice a day,’ Turpin said.
They ‘never hardly argued’, he added.
‘I just loved my wife dearly. When you get married for better or for worse, okay it turns out it’s a bit worse, but we’re carrying on.’
Turpin said he ‘probably did’ cause injury to his wife on 22 September.
Simon Gledhill, defending, asked: ‘Do you think you caused those cuts to your wife and to yourself?’
‘I probably did, yeah,’ Turpin replied.
But he said he did not know why he would have done so.
He denied trying to commit suicide.
The court heard that Turpin spent the ‘most’ time looking after his wife after she lost her eyesight.
‘So-called homecare,’ he said, ‘I don’t know. They never done anything.’
Asked how he felt about being the main carer, he replied: ‘It was my wife. I loved her. And I didn’t want to see her suffer, you know?’
On how he felt ‘emotionally’ about his wife’s deteriorating health, Turpin told jurors: ‘A bit low but I managed, you know. Did the breakfast, did the dinner.’
Turpin went on to say that his wife’s attitude changed towards him when she had a catheter fitted, that she was ‘more abrupt’ and ‘didn’t want to go out’.
On the night of the incident, the court heard that Ms Turpin woke her husband up.
‘Giving me a dig in the back,’ he said.
‘She was on about she couldn’t sleep.
’Then she started screaming and I can’t remember much more after that.’
Her tone was ‘very aggressive’, Turpin said.
The injuries to her chest caused her right lung to collapse.
After the attack, Turpin called the emergency services and said: ‘I can’t take any more of it…she’s been ill and it’s got right on top of me.’
He said: ‘I tried to stab her and I’ve stabbed myself.’
Turpin, of Ringshall Road, Orpington, denies attempted murder and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
In cross-examination, Turpin accepted that he caused a stab wound to his wife, but denied that his intention was to kill her.
‘No sir,’ he said. ‘Hundred per cent no.’
The pensioner also denied that he aimed specifically for her heart.
Jurors heard, however, that he does not remember the attack.
Mr Richardson read out Turpin’s account of the incident, which formed part of his defence statement.
‘He thought he might be able to shock her into stopping.
‘So he went and collected a knife from the kitchen.
‘He was hoping to quieten her down.
‘He accepts that he inflicted the wounds but was not aiming for a particular [area].
‘He simply wanted to stop her from screaming.’
The prosecutor went on to ask: ‘But it would be, I mean, to put it politely, a most unusual way to quiet somebody down and stop them from shouting and screaming to stab them repeatedly?’
Turpin replied: ‘So what you’re saying is I should have strangled her?’
He repeated that he just wanted to ‘keep her quiet’.
‘She’s the only one I’ve got.’
Asked about the knife used, Turpin told jurors that he was a butcher and it was the smallest knife he had in the house.
‘Sir, I’m a butcher. It’s a carver. For roast beef and stuff like that.’
The 90-year-old insisted he did not remember the stabbing: ‘I swear by almighty god I don’t know.’
Mr Richardson suggested that Turpin could have stabbed his wife’s leg or arm if he only wanted to stop her from screaming.
‘These stab wounds were to her chest and the area of her heart collapsing her lung, to her abdomen,’ the prosecutor continued. ‘These aren’t stab wounds to quieten her down to wake her from her screaming.’
Turpin replied: ‘What else would it be? I didn’t just get up in the night and run downstairs and get the knife and stab her. There was a reason.’
Mr Richardson went on: ‘And the reason why you were trying to kill her was because you had had enough. She was getting on your nerves and it was all getting on top of you.
‘The obvious explanation for what you did that night was that you were trying to kill Joan because you simply had enough.’
‘No, sir,’ Turpin said.
The trial continues.
