Northants Police officer faked stab injuries and hid blood-stained mallet, court hears

PC Adrian Goldsmith, aged 50 - known as Otis - is accused of killing his wife Jill, 49, in the porch of their home next to Wootton Hall police headquarters in Northampton on March 26 last year.

A jury at Stafford Crown Court heard evidence from Goldsmith on Monday who said he had hit his wife on the head with a small box battery “as hard as he could” after she tried to attack him with a knife.

Goldsmith said he believed his wife was trying to kill him and he therefore hit her repeatedly on the head to prevent her from stabbing him.

The court heard he also grabbed her round the throat in a move he had learnt as a police officer, which was “designed to cause maximum pain.”

Goldsmith said: “I squeezed as hard as I could. If anything, I felt like she was fighting through it.

“If anything it felt like she was going to push up again. I let go.

“I grabbed for the only thing I could see which I thought was a paint tin by the side of her head.

“I swiped it towards her head. I though I’ve got to stop you before you kill me.

“It did connect. I brought it back and my hand hit the wall. The second strike was sightly harder. The third one I used as much force as I could in such a small distance.

“I was terrified and gripped through fear, I felt it was all that separated me from life and death.”

The jury heard that Goldsmith stopped hitting his wife after he saw blood coming out of the back of her head.

Goldsmith said he thought his wife was just unconscious and then decided he needed to call the emergency services.

He said that, in the period before the emergency services arrived, he put the block of the mallet, which he had hit his wife on the head with, in an upstairs cupboard.

Goldsmith said he also used the knife his wife had been holding to inflict stab wounds on his back, neck, leg and buttocks.

Despite the fact he did not disclose this to the officers at the scene or in his first interview, Goldsmith said he “did not want to lie” about what had happened.

He said: “I didn’t want to say I have hit a woman. I wanted to be believed that I wasn’t the aggressor.

“I just opened the cupboard and lobbed the mallet in. It was just fear.

“Looking at the carnage in the porch, I just did something stupid. Looking at that I thought ‘what are they going to think’. This is a stereotype cliché, it is always the bloke.

“I wanted to be believed that it should have been me lying there not Jill. Only at the end did I do something to fight back.

“I did the stupidest thing, I wanted something to show for this. I picked up a knife and the first one I did was on my backside. I started pushing it in to my shoulder, neck. Not randomly placed marks, but where I thought I had come in to contact with the knife or where it just missed me.

“I put one on the groin where I thought knife was going to make contact. I put one in my calf where I actually had one already. Rational thinking went out the window. It was not to tell lies to show what had happened.”

Goldsmith said he told his defence team about the self-inflicted stab wounds after his initial police interviews.

During cross-examination by John Lloyd-Jones, Goldsmith said he had not intended to cause his wife’s death and was “unaware” of the injuries he was causing.

He said: “My wife was trying to kill me. I was not the aggressor.

“My actions were designed to make her stop. I wanted to cause her a lot of pain. When I hit Jill, I was thinking I’ve got to do something or I’m going to die. I had no motive to kill my wife. It was survival instinct.

“I was driven by fear not anger.”

Goldsmith denies a charge of murder. The trial continues.