Solicitor: '˜She said if I ever left, she'd kill me'

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In the tape heard at Manchester Crown Court yesterday, David Edwards is heard telling wife Sharon: “We’re going to have to find an excuse for my eye. That one doesn’t wash.”

Sharon Edwards, 42, of Parkers Wood Close, Chorley, denies fatally stabbing Mr Edwards, 51, in the heart just weeks after their wedding in Las Vegas.

On the tape, Mr Edwards says: “You can knock me out with one punch.”

He later went on to add: “ I was joking. Honey, honey, you said to me, ‘I’d like to think I could punch you and knock you out with a single punch.’ I’ve told you you did it rather hard. I don’t think you’ve ever knocked me out but...I said that purely in jest.

“The whole point of me phoning was apologise to you.”

Mr Edwards was found dead in his bed on August 23 last year – the day after they returned from a holiday in Majorca – after his wife ran to neighbours screaming he was not breathing.

The court has heard dad-of-one Mr Edwards had confided in colleagues he was a victim of domestic abuse.

He accidentally left his dictaphone running when his wife rang him at work, three weeks before his death.

His legal secretary Louise Bibby found it after his death and handed it to police, the court was told.

In further video footage of him drunk, from Sharon Edwards’ phone, she is heard threatening to “make a statement” about him and saying, “Why are you bullying me?”

He replies: “Who’s bullying? Look at my nose.

“Look at my ear, look at that other ear. You’ve punched the hell out of me.”

Giving evidence, solicitor Julie Moss, who had known David Edwards for six years, said he had told her: “She said she’d kill me if I ever left her,” during a discussion of their turbulent relationship.

She said Sharon Edwards had to be escorted out of the venue of a work do after slapping David Edwards, because she was jealous he had spoken to a waitress.

She also revealed he had also told her Sharon Edwards had knifed him with a blunt knife in his side.

Louise Bibby, David’s legal secretary, said her first encounter with Sharon Edwards was when she phoned his office to make a crass remark about why he was off work that day.

She made up to 12 calls a day to his office and would tell Ms Bibby if she didn’t put her through to him she would “come down”.

Ms Bibby said: “After the wedding he came in with a huge lump on his head and black eyes and said he walked into his garage door and I told him I didn’t believe him. He just said: ‘It’s just one of those things.’

“I did ask him to leave her. I said not to go through with the wedding.

“He said he was too scared to leave. She said if he left she would kill him.”

Follow our live coverage from Manchester Crown Court here

(Proceeding)

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