thisismoney.co.uk: Wife stabbed husband after £1m buy-to-let collapse
Fam IslamMarketing Assistant
Friends recall them as an ordinary middle class couple who had caught the buy-to-let bug.
Like many others planning for retirement, Jennifer and Michael Parkinson hoped the property portfolio worth at least £1m that they had carefully built up would ensure a comfortable old age.
But when the bubble burst and they faced bankruptcy, a drunken dispute over debts ended with Jennifer stabbing her husband to death.
The 63-year- old retired headmaster was knifed three times at their £330,000 penthouse apartment in Gosport, Hampshire. Yesterday his wife was jailed for three years and eight months for manslaughter at Winchester Crown Court after she admitted killing the man she had loved for 20 years.
Their row broke out when Mr Parkinson blamed his wife for the failure of their investment plan, which had seen them acquire 20 properties at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds. The couple began snapping up one-and-two-bedroom new-build homes in the North of England when Mr Parkinson retired early from a school in Rutland, Leicestershire, after a nervous breakdown. They used an inheritance from his mother to fund deposits on the flats and hoped the rental income would supplement their pensions. But the couple had been losing £4,000 a month and faced bankruptcy due to rising interest rates and a flooding incident in some of their flats.
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The court heard that on March 22 last year the 'hot tempered and feisty' housewife, who had drunk a bottle of wine, flew into a rage after her husband broke a promise they made not to blame each other over their investments. After he pushed her up against a wall, she ran into the kitchen, picked up a 5in kitchen knife and, after a struggle, stabbed him in the chest, back and hand.
The 66-year- old told jurors:
'I picked up and brandished a knife at my husband. I just wanted to stop him in his tracks. He was shouting by then and bellowing. He bent my wrist back. I had to let go of the knife.
'He pushed me back and I fell against a plastic storage box. I kicked out, picked up the knife and stabbed. I don't know why. I think i just panicked. It didn't seem to go in very far but he rolled over on his side and gasped and i saw the blood coming out. I was horrified to see so much blood. I was kneeling in it.
'I didn't do it deliberately to kill him or end his life or anything so serious. I don't know why I reacted this way.'
In her 999 call, Parkinson was heard to say: 'Mike, Mike. I have killed my husband.' Mr Parkinson died of his injuries the following morning.
Former neighbour John Price, 64, said: 'There was nothing to ever suggest anything like this could happen. They still walked around holding hands after 20 years of marriage, and called each other 'darling', that kind of thing'.
He said they had caught the rental bug after being forced to let out their home when they had to move to Yorkshire to care for Mr Parkinson's elderly mother. Parkinson was cleared of murder last month but admitted manslaughter on the basis of no intent.
Yesterday she remained stony faced as Judge Guy Boney QC jailed her, saying: 'You took your husband's life and at the same time ruined the rest of your own.'
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