David Hunter, the British expatriate who suffocated his terminally ill wife in a mercy killing that sparked worldwide debate, has died in a Cypriot hospital. He was 78.
The former coal miner from Ashington, Northumberland, was admitted to hospital this week with a urinary tract infection and suffering from heart failure, his family said. His daughter Lesley Cawthorne, 53, who lives in Norfolk, confirmed his death. “We are devastated, and the support over the last few years has meant the world to us,” she said.
“David Hunter, 78, who killed his terminally ill wife in Cyprus, dies in hospital.”
Hunter killed his wife Janice, 74, at their home in Tremithousa, near Paphos, in December 2021. He used a pillow to suffocate her as she lay in bed, he later told the court. Janice had been battling terminal blood cancer and was in acute pain, housebound, and had lost weight. Hunter said she had begged him to end her life for weeks. “I would never in a million years take my wife’s life if she hadn’t asked me,” he said during his trial. “She begged me. For six weeks she was asking me, 24 hours a day. It was doing my head in.”
After suffocating his wife, Hunter attempted to take his own life by swallowing pills. He sent a message to his brother in the UK, who alerted Interpol, which in turn contacted Cypriot police. Officers went to the Hunters’ home and took him to hospital, where his stomach was pumped.
Hunter was charged with premeditated murder, which would have carried a life sentence, but was found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter in 2023. He was jailed for two years but, with time served, was released in the summer of 2023. He remained in Cyprus to be near Janice’s grave in Tremithousa. The couple had been married for 52 years and moved to Cyprus in 2002.
Cyprus’s attorney general appealed against the manslaughter conviction and the sentence, and the appeal was still ongoing when Hunter died. The case had attracted global media attention as debate over mercy killing intensified.
Hunter had been suffering poor health since his release from prison. His daughter said the family was devastated by his loss.