A woman says she stabbed her husband of 24 years after becoming “petrified” by violence she says she was subjected to throughout their marriage.

Penelope Jackson, 66, is standing trial at Bristol Crown Court accused of the murder of her 78-year-old husband David at their home in Parsonage Road, Berrow, on February 13 this year.

The Avon and Somerset Police have released the above video of her arrest; in which Jackson said "I stabbed him".

She was arrested after a 999 call to police in which she told a call handler she had stabbed Mr Jackson "three times".

Bridgwater Mercury: VICTIM: 78-year-old David Jackson was stabbed at the couple's home in BerrowVICTIM: 78-year-old David Jackson was stabbed at the couple's home in Berrow

Jackson said she “never knew what was going to happen” when she walked through the door of the home she shared with 78-year-old David Jackson.

Mr Jackson died after being stabbed three times by his wife on February 13 at their home in Parsonage Road, Berrow, Somerset.

As she gave evidence to a jury at Bristol Crown Court on Tuesday, Jackson told how the couple had got together following an affair they had had while she was still married to her second husband, who went on to take his own life.

She said her daughter with her second husband grew up thinking Mr Jackson was her father, but he would threaten Jackson to “behave or I will tell her I’m not her daddy”.

Mrs Jackson, who admits manslaughter but denies murdering her husband, said she “walked on eggshells” and “lived with a knot in my stomach” throughout their marriage.

She told the jury: “I didn’t know if I was waking up to nice David or nasty David.”

Jackson added that in the later years of their marriage it was not clear what would trigger her husband’s anger.

She said: “I couldn’t work out if it was baked beans or the broccoli was wrong. I couldn’t work out what was triggering it. In later years, any friends he didn’t like I would drop them. I stopped going places, I didn’t have girlfriends anymore.

“The things he loved about me in the beginning, like my confidence and ability to talk to anyone, it changed, he didn’t like it.”

Jackson added that it was “important” to her to make the marriage work after losing “somebody I loved very much through my own negligence.”

She said: “He used to say, ‘You never loved me,’ and I used to say, ‘If I don’t love you, why would I stay all these years? You know I love you’.

“I still love him, even after all of this.”

The trial continues.

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