True crime series The Lady Killers airs the chilling moment a wife who abused her husband for 10 years brushed off his injuries and her treatment of him as ‘banter’ despite them causing his death.
Hannegret Donnelly was convicted of the murder of her husband, Christopher Donnelly, in March 2018, after calling in the police herself to their Buckinghamshire home.
When they arrived, Christopher had already been dead for 12 hours, and was found on the bathroom floor with 78 external injuries, which included neck and spine fractures.
Becoming known as the ‘Rolling Pin Killer’, Hannegret willingly went to the police station for questioning, where she brushed off abuse of both him and their children as in-jokes for everyone involved.
She’s seen laughing and brushing off his injuries, as she sickeningly tells police: ‘First of all I tried to sort things out with him in a bantering sort of way, like “if I hit you with a rolling pin maybe you’d come out of your trance”.’
‘I’d hit him a bit harder sometimes. As I said he never… it wasn’t that he fell and lost consciousness,’ she later added, also admitting to punching him on the nose.
‘It was more like we had a chase around the kitchen table. Yeah, it’s just sometimes. We’d chase around the kitchen table in a light-hearted way.’
‘I like to be informed as to what is going on,’ she said. ‘I don’t like when people talk behind my back.’
She is now imprisoned after being charged with his murder, and jailed for life with a minimum term of 16 years.
In the documentary, former detective Clare Mackintosh reveals Christopher’s autopsy uncovered dozens of old scars and injuries that would’ve been created over years of abuse.
‘He had a cauliflower ear, and a fracture to the cartilage in his voice box which was consistent with attempted strangulation,’ she tells the cameras.
The pathologist determined Christopher’s eventual death as pneumonia, aided by a failing immune system caused by years of systemic abuse.
It was then uncovered that the both Christopher and their children were subjected to ‘a dictatorship’ in the home, with the kids even being taught by her so they can live by her rule.
‘Hannegret created a household that almost like a separate land; it’s a land where she has absolute power,’ Forensic Psychologist Dr Donna Youngs says.
‘Like any territory under absolute dictatorial control, it’s one where she keeps a very firm hold on the infiltration of any external influences: there’s no technology allowed, the children are home schooled. It’s a psychological fortress.’
For Christopher, this also eventually meant he wasn’t allowed access to the medical care he desperately needed when he became ill.
The Lady Killers airs 10pm tonight on Quest Red.
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