Tue May 21, 2013 7:38 pm
A former football apprentice accused of murdering his adulterous, beautician wife today wept as he recalled how he “lost control” when he tried to “disarm her” of the knife which killed her.
Andrew Parsons, 38, is accused of stabbing 31-year-old American Janee Parsons to death as she got ready for a weekend away with her new lover, Daniel Hansens.
Former Cardiff City apprentice Parsons is said to have punched his wife to the floor of their home in Bicester, Oxfordshire, on December 1 last year before returning to his prone victim moments later and stabbing her repeatedly with a knife.
The whole thing was unwittingly captured on a secret dictation device, installed by Parsons in the marital bedroom to snoop on his wife’s conversations.
Parsons admits he killed his wife, but said he was “retaliating” after he spotted her crouching down with the blade moments after a heated row between the pair.
Giving evidence from the dock at Oxford Crown Court, Parsons described how he had punched his wife in the build-up to the stabbing.
He said: “We were both on the landing. I am in her way, she’s trying to get downstairs.
“She goes at me and I reacted and went back at her.
“She had her mobile in her hand and hit me round the face. I threw a punch.”
Asked by defence counsel David Hislop QC what happened next, Parsons said he went downstairs to get a towel for his dazed wife but remembered they were upstairs. As he came to the landing, he noticed she was clutching a knife he had previously been using to open boxes, he told the court.
He said: “Janee was semi-crouched down against the bedroom door. She had a knife in her hand.
“I could see the knife. I just went to disarm her. I lunged towards her from the top of the stairs. She swung the knife towards me and cut me on the hand.”
Parsons said he had “completely lost control”, adding: “I just lost it. I don’t know what I did or said.”
Cross-examining, prosecutor Miranda Moore QC asked Parsons why he hadn’t mentioned his wife cutting him during the attack in subsequent police interviews.
She said his reply of not remembering was “a convenient get-out”.
Last week the jury heard audio footage of the attack. Several people inside the packed courtroom were visibly distressed as they listened to the sound of thumping, followed by screams, after Parsons demanded his wife talk to him, the court heard.
Mrs Parsons, said to have been prone on the floor by this point, asks: “Are you going to kill me?”
The court listened to footage of her screaming, panting for breath, yelling “oh my God,” and calling her husband’s name.
Prosecutors said Parsons soon left the scene before returning to dump his wife’s body in the bathroom and calling the police.
The dictation device captured the 999 call, during which Parsons said he had “hurt my wife real bad”, before emergency services turned up at his house. They initially thought Parsons was injured, before somebody can be heard saying: “We’ve got a body.”
The Parsons had married in Las Vegas in 2004, and had lived in America before settling in England.
But Mrs Parsons met Mr Hansens in October 2012, and spoke to her husband about separating a short time later.
Despite the Parsons sleeping in separate rooms since then, the defendant told the court he had hoped they might rekindle a romance.
He said the couple had slept in the same bed a few days before her death, and had parted company amicably after hugging the night before she died. She had planned to wear a dress Parsons had bought as a gift earlier that week to her company awards dinner in London the weekend she died, Parsons said.
Parsons, a heat pump engineer for swimming pools, of Lucerne Avenue, Bicester, denies murder. The trial continues.
Tue May 21, 2013 11:00 pm
I was down at the City as a young boy the same time as this Parsons boy.i remember him.