A British man named Graham Mansfield is accused of killing his wife Dyanne Mansfield, who was very sick and was going to die soon. Mansfield testified in the case earlier in the week. He said that Dyanne had asked him to kill her.
Graham Mansfield, who is 73, was not found guilty of murder, but he was found guilty of manslaughter. A BBC report said that the event took place at the couple’s suburban home in March 2021.
Dyanne, who was 71 at the time, was told she had stage four cancer in October 2020. Doctors told Graham that if she went through chemotherapy, she would only have a few years to live.
Graham was quoted by the Manchester Evening News as saying:
“She told me, “Graham, right now is the best I’ll ever be. Will you kill me when things get bad, when they get too bad for me? I had never heard words that made me feel so sad.”
In his statement, the 73-year-old man said that he had planned to kill Dyanne as long as he also died.
“Without her, nothing else matters. I told her, “You’re not alone in this, and we’ll see it through to the end.”” Graham Mansfield tries to kill himself, but his plan goes wrong.
Graham Mansfield called England’s emergency number 999 on March 24 of last year to say that his wife Dyanne had died. Graham also tried to kill himself by taking too much of a drug.
When emergency services got there, Dyanne’s throat had been cut and Graham was lying in a “pool of blood.” The Times said that he even asked the police to let him die.
Graham Mansfield said the following when he talked to police at the time:
“My wife has cancer that will kill her soon, so we agreed to kill ourselves. I think I killed my wife and am now trying to kill myself, but everything is going wrong.”
The police also found two notes that said the couple had decided to die together. A report from The Times said that neither of the notes had Dyanne’s signature on them.
Graham said more about the case when he was testifying:
“We didn’t think we were doing anything wrong when we planned to kill ourselves. We didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission to say that we were done with this world and wanted to leave.”
The Guardian said that instead of convicting Graham Mansfield of murder, the jury found him guilty of manslaughter and gave him a two-year jail sentence with the first year suspended.