MCDONALD INQUEST: Taxi driver stabbed his wife
29 October 2009
A Newmarket taxi driver repeatedly stabbed his estranged wife then killed himself by setting fire to the home they had shared.
Keith McDonald, 47, who had a cocaine habit and was due in court to face an affray charge, attacked his wife Christine on May 8 at their house in New Cheveley Road, punching her in the face, before stabbling her nine times in the chest and abdomen. She died within minutes of the attack slumped against the bed they had once shared.
McDonald then cut himself on the neck and both wrists before he set fire to a pile of plastic coat hangers and towels on a couch in the living room of the house. He then when back into the bedroom lay down on the floor and died not from his wounds but from inhalation of fire fumes.
At an inquest in Wisbech today, north and east Cambridgeshire coroner William Morris ruled that Christime McDonald had been unlawfully killed by her husband who had then killed himself.
"This is one of the most tragic cases I have had to deal with in many many years," said Mr Morris, "and I want to express my sincere sympathy to both families."
The hearing heard that in the months leading up to their deaths the couple's relationship had become increasingly turbulent.
Family friend Julie Knappett, said in a statement that Mr McDonald had been "going down hill mentally" for the past 12 months due to his use of cocaine.
And David Jackson, who worked with them as a taxi driver, said Keith McDonald was a "control freal" who spent thousands of pounds on cocaine and was often verbally abusive to his wife calling her names when they were on the taxi rank and over the radio.
Mr Jackson said he became very fond of Mrs McDonald but rumours that they had had an affair weren't true.
He said Mr McDonald had demanded money for drugs from her and threatened her with a knife and that he had also once tried to strangle her on the taxi rank and another driver had had to pull him off.
Dane Scarlett, who was Mrs McDonald's lover at the time of her death, said he had known the couple for around 18 years as friends.
He told the inquest: that around five weeks before she died Mrs McDonald had rung him at around 10pm one night, sounding very upset and asking him to come to the house.
She told him her husband had "trashed" the house because he wanted money for drugs which she did not have.Mr Scarlett said she was looking for somehwere else to live and he said she could stay with him at his flat in Lapwing Court in Mildenhall.
"We were only friends at first but then we realised we had feelings for each other," said Mr Scarlett. When he asked if she was going to get a divorce she told him: "I can't he will kill me."
He said Mrs McDonald had returned to the Newmarket house to collect her possessions at times when her husband was out. On Friday May 8, the day she died, Mrs McDonald went to the house with her husband to sort out paperwork linked to their taxi business.
She sent a text to Mr Scarlett saying "I hope to see you later."
"She still cared about Keith and she still cared what happened to him," he said.
Later when he rang her on her mobile Mr McDonald has answered and said it was a wrong number.
At around 5pm, Mr Scarlett who worked for a local television comppany, had driven past the house on a call and seen both the couple's taxis parked outside. Later when he had heard nothing from his partner he contacted the police. Two days later officers visited him to tell him she was dead.
Dr Simon Bailey, Mr McDonald's GP said he had seen him in April when he had advised him to seek anger management treatment following a violent domestic incident in which the police were involved. He had also sent him for routine blood tests which revealed he could have been in the early stages of leukaemia.
Nine days before the couple died Dr Bailey said he was called in after Mr McDonald had tried kill himself with an overdose of paracetamol and Ibuprofen.
He called in the local mental health team for an assessment as he believed Mr McDonald was a danger to himself and others. He was not sectioned as he agreed to attend hospital voluntarily.
Recording his verdict Mr Morris said: "Keith McDonald had difficult pressures to deal iwth. He suspected his wife was having an affair but that probably was not at the core of this at all and the relationship she did have with Dane Scarlett was one of very recent origin indeed and all the time Christine McDonald acted as a very reasonable person.
"I am satisfied that the wounds Christine McDonald received were inflicted by Keith McDonald. After she had been harmed he was clearly in a very distressed frame of mind and inflicted shatp injury wounds to himseld dripping blood as he walked around the property.
"He ends up setting fire to the property and the evidence is that Christine McDonald was probably already dead by the time the fire was set," said Mr Morris.
Source; newmarketjournal.co.uk
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