A man has been jailed for life for killing his wife after pushing her into a pond while she was in her wheelchair.
Peter Dansie, 71, from the Australian city of Adelaide, drowned his 67-year-old wife Helen Dansie in what a judge described as the “ultimate act of domestic violence”.
The court had heard that Dansie’s feelings for his wife had soured and that he wanted to pursue a sexual relationship with a woman in China.
Dansie’s home had been searched after his wife’s death, the day before he was due to fly to China, with police finding his suitcase packed with condoms, viagra, sex toys and lingerie.
Justice David Lovell also said that Dansie saw his wife, a former microbiologist who was left disabled after a stroke in the 1990s, as a financial burden.
Dansie, who had been her carer, had been “concerned” about the cost of various court proceedings over his wife’s finances and about the possibility that he would “lose control” of her money, the judge added.
On Easter Sunday 2017, Dansie had taken his wife on what appeared to be an innocent outing to a public garden, then waited until it was nearly dark and many other people had left.
