An 80-year-old retired engineer received a life sentence today for the murder of his wife, following his confession to an affair and secret lovechild during their 53-year marriage.
David Clarke, a church-goer, confessed to fatally battering his unsuspecting wife, Helen, 77, with a hammer and setting her on fire just days after revealing his betrayal. This revelation deeply devastated Mrs. Clarke, described as a ‘doting granny’, especially as the affair involved a woman she considered a friend.
The couple’s relationship took a dark turn after they traveled to Australia to meet Clarke’s former lover and her family. Upon returning to their cottage on the Gower Peninsula, tensions escalated, leading to arguments and physical altercations.
Four days later, Clarke texted family members, professing his love for them, before embarking on what seemed like an innocent morning drive with his wife. However, during the journey, Clarke stopped the car, brutally attacked his wheelchair-bound wife with a lump hammer, and then set her ablaze with paraffin inside their Honda Civic.
Despite a passer-by’s attempt to intervene, Clarke drove off, eventually crashing into a hedge as flames engulfed the car. Fortunately, Mrs. Clarke managed to inform firefighters about her husband’s culpability before succumbing to her injuries.
Clarke, a former international pistol-shooting champion and father of four, will now spend the rest of his life behind bars for this heinous crime, committed on September 22 of the previous year.
‘He hit me twice with a sledge hammer, covered me in paraffin and set me on fire,’ she said.
She was taken to hospital where she tragically died from her injuries two days later.
Questioned in hospital about a bruise on his head, the court heard Clarke told a paramedic: ‘My wife is not the forgiving kind.
‘We have been married 53 years, I had an affair 50 years ago she only found out a few days ago.’
Speaking later of the attack on phone from prison, Clarke told his son he ‘hit her with the hammer to make her go unconscious but she just wouldn’t go out.’
Mrs. Clarke suffered extensive burns across her body and sustained nine head wounds from the hammer blows, with medical professionals informing her family that her injuries were ‘unsurvivable’.
During the hearing, it was revealed that Clarke had engaged in an affair with a woman identified only as ‘L’ – a friend of Mrs. Clarke – while the couple resided in Zambia.
In 2003, while living in Zimbabwe, Clarke disclosed the affair and the existence of his secret daughter to his son, David Clarke Junior, instructing him not to divulge this information to his mother.
Mr Jones said: ‘He asked David Clarke Jnr to go for a drive with him, and during the drive the defendant started to cry and informed his son he had an affair with a woman in Zambia – a family friend referred to as ‘L’ – and he believed he had a daughter as a result of that affair.’
The son ‘believed there was no good that could come from his mother knowing’, Mr Jones said, although he did tell his own wife.
