Wife, 72, guilty of murdering husband, 84, after claiming he fell on knife

A 72-year-old woman who told police her elderly husband died after stumbling and falling onto a “little knife” has been found guilty of his murder. Daryl Berman, the third wife of David Berman, was convicted on Tuesday at Minshull Street Crown Court following a week-long retrial, after jurors in the first trial failed to reach a verdict. David Berman, 84, suffered a fatal chest wound at the couple’s home on Butterstile Lane in Prestwich, Greater Manchester, on 13 March last year. Daryl Berman called emergency services at 1.55pm that afternoon and administered CPR under the operator’s instruction, but her husband was pronounced dead at 2.39pm. The prosecution told the court that Berman’s account – that her husband had dropped her lunch tray and accidentally impaled himself on the blade of a paring knife – was initially accepted by police. It was only later that a senior pathologist was called in after another doctor became “troubled” by the injury. Home Office pathologist Dr Philip Lumb reported that the stab wound had the “typical features of a homicide” and that while not impossible, an accidental fall was “very unlikely to have caused the fatal wound”. Mr Berman was also found to have a “defensive” wound to his finger. The couple, married for 27 years, had enjoyed a “loving and mutually supportive” relationship, the court heard, with no record of domestic violence or police involvement. Daryl Berman was described as a “very supportive and loving wife”. But in the days after her husband’s death, prosecutors said members of his family noticed how “matter-of-fact and emotionless” the defendant was. “Although there is no set way to respond to and deal with grief in the days following David’s death, members of his family noticed how matter-of-fact and emotionless the defendant was,” prosecutor Michael Brady KC told jurors. The court also heard that Mr Berman, who had dementia, used a walking stick and had been suffering from shortness of breath in the 10 days before his death, but had been “in the best health his family had seen for some time”. On the morning of his death, he had been with his daughter and great-granddaughter at a play centre. Prosecutor Michael Brady KC said Berman stabbed her husband “for a reason known only to her”. Daryl Berman denied murder throughout both trials. She is due to be sentenced on 3 July.