Wife who broke husband’s neck after he got new lover pregnant convicte | UK | News

An estranged wife who killed her love cheat husband after “overpowering him” in a furious fight after he told her he thought his new lover might be pregnant, has been convicted of murder. Amy Pugh dialled 99 claiming husband Kyle had attempted suicide by hanging after she broke his neck in a bitter brawl. Mr Pugh had suffered compression to the neck and fractures to the structure of the neck, as well as a fractured nose and eye socket and died at the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford surrounded by his family the day after his wife alerted the emergency services.

But today a jury at Stafford Crown Court convicted her of murder and she now faces life in jail. Pugh, who wore a white top and black suit, clasped her hands to her mouth in the dock after the jury returned their guilty verdict after more than 11 hours of deliberations.

The trial heard how Pugh called her father before dialling 999 20 minutes after “gaining the upper hand” over her husband, from whom she was separated, in a fight in the kitchen and attacking him.

She told the emergency call handler her husband had taken his own life and could be heard saying: “Kyle, wake up, why have you done this.”

Mr Pugh had been in a new relationship with a new woman but was visiting the family home in Newport, to visit his children on the night of the incident.

While they were initially in the kitchen listening to music, Pugh told the court she had “lost composure” after finding out her estranged husband’s new partner may be pregnant and they had an argument.

Pugh told the jury in evidence how she went to a shop to get two bottles of orangeade and a bottle of vodka before her 30-year-old husband told her his girlfriend might be pregnant, which she said “progressed into a bit of an argument”.

She told the court: “I was trying to ignore him and ignore the situation. When he said to me that she said she can’t do a pregnancy test until her next missed period, I lost my composure. You can take a pregnancy test whenever. He looked more … in a bit of a panic than anything else.

“I went into the bathroom and got the pregnancy tests, threw them at him, and said, ‘make her take a pregnancy test’. He was backing up to the front door as I was throwing pregnancy tests at him. I said to him if it comes back negative, come back and make sure nothing like this happens again. If it comes back positive, I will sign the divorce papers before the week’s out.”

Pugh said she saw her husband leave through the front door and she believed he was “going to sort it out” and “see if she was pregnant or not”.

She told the court that later that evening, she opened the back door to let her dog out when she saw Mr Pugh hanging and his right hand came in through the door.

She said of his hand: “It was a different colour, it was almost like he had been playing with ink or something. I instantly knew something was wrong. His face was like purply. It did not look like Kyle, he was a different colour. Almost looked like he was a bit swollen, like everything was bigger.”

Sobbing in the witness box she added: “He was not waking up like he normally does. He was not doing what normally happened, he was not moving, he was just there. I was screaming, I was shouting. I was repeating ‘he’s dead, what do I do, he’s killed himself’.”

The court heard that paramedics were able to restore Mr Pugh’s pulse but he died in hospital the next day.

Pugh, who was separated from her husband at the time of the alleged attack, was charged with his murder in November last year.

Prosecutors had told the trial Pugh had played the part of a “concerned” wife and made a “desperate” 999 call, but they said it was actually her who inflicted the wounds on him.

Julian Evans KC told a jury of seven women and five men that the couple had a “volatile, turbulent and abusive” relationship which would involve physical violence to each other and was often fuelled by drink or drugs.

In his opening speech, he said Mr Pugh had been in a new relationship with another woman at the time of the incident, but was at the family home to visit his children. He said “all was well” with them initially, while they were in the kitchen listening to music, before they argued and the situation escalated into violence.

He said: “It was violence that involved Amy striking Kyle in the face and he struck her back, but it didn’t stop there. It involved Amy overpowering Kyle, she gained the upper hand over him, she was able to subdue him and deliberately compressed his neck by some means, whether that be a chokehold, strangulation or a ligature.

“It was violence directed at the neck and violence that was unlawful.”

Mr Evans said that while Mr Pugh did have a history of self-harm and attempts to take his own life, he had sent messages to his girlfriend, his dad and his friends that evening making plans to see them that night. He said Pugh had known about her husband’s “vulnerabilities” and had “quite deliberately and quite callously sought to use them to her own advantage on March 22 2022”.

He said: “Kyle was making plans to meet up with people that night – in other words, he was looking forward to events and not back. There is no suggestion he was contemplating taking his own life. A violent incident did take place, but the violence was not self-inflicted.

“It wasn’t an attempt to self-harm or take his own life. It was not violence that Kyle directed at his own body, it was violence at Amy Pugh’s hand, directed at him.”

The court was also told Pugh answered a phone call on her husband’s phone from his new girlfriend at 8.55pm, and told her: “He’s my husband, he is never coming back, this is where he is staying.”

Pugh will be sentenced in September.