‘They drove me to a mental hospital in wet pyjamas then put me with junkies and murderers’: David Hunter reveals his terrifying ordeal behind bars after he suffocated his beloved wife Janice to end years of intolerable pain
There is a blank in David Hunter’s memory, a void that no prompting will fill. After the retired miner killed his desperately ill wife Janice – suffocating her when she ‘begged’ him repeatedly to end her pain – he swallowed every pill in the house, chasing them down with a bottle of brandy.
Oblivion beckoned and on that awful day in December 2021, at the home in Cyprus he shared with his adored wife of 52 years, David wished only for the release of death.
‘I didn’t want to live without her. At the time I couldn’t have cared less what happened to me. If I’d been shot or hanged I’d have been grateful.’
The feeling stayed with him; intractable, persistent: for days he remained suicidal, his thoughts scrambled by the overdose, his powers of rational reasoning gone.
He was arrested then shackled in a hospital ward with a constant police guard. He had his stomach pumped. Frightened and bewildered, he was sectioned and thrown into a cramped padded cell, then placed in a secure room at a psychiatric hospital with five severely mentally-ill inmates.
After David killed his desperately ill wife Janice – suffocating her when she ‘begged’ him repeatedly to end her pain – he swallowed every pill in the house, chasing them down with brandy
‘I didn’t want to live without her’: David pictured with Janice on a trip to Blackpool in 1983
As David, 76, was charged with murder, he faced the awful prospect of a life sentence in prison on the ‘paradise’ island to which they had retired in 2001 from Northumberland
READ MORE HERE: ‘Janice was hysterical with pain, she begged me to kill her… I still see her face, in my nightmares. Lots of faces. All Janice’s. All dead’: David Hunter’s first shattering interview since being cleared of murdering his terminally ill wife
‘One was jabbering, shouting and laughing all day and night in Greek. He was talking on an imaginary mobile phone and I only got to sleep when I grabbed the make-believe ‘phone’ and pretended to take the batteries out.
‘One night a big, fat lad was lying naked on my bed. I was terrified. He wouldn’t get off. Then I realised he had fouled my bed. I shouted for the guard – but I had to clean up the mess, put on the new bedding. I was terrified the whole time.’
Worse was to come. As David, 76, was charged with murder, he faced the awful prospect of a life sentence in prison on the ‘paradise’ island to which they had retired in 2001 from Northumberland.
Then the charge was reduced to manslaughter, he was sentenced to two years in prison, and last Monday he was released after serving 19 months in custody.
‘I feel numb, it doesn’t feel real,’ David told me straight after his release. ‘I’ve just called my daughter Lesley in England and we were crying so much we couldn’t speak. We just managed, ‘I love you’.’
In part one of our interview in the Daily Mail yesterday, David gave a harrowing account of how he ended his 75-year-old wife’s suffering – the awful act countered by relief that he was liberating Janice from intolerable pain.
The Hunters had shared 16 gloriously happy years in Cyprus until, in autumn 2016, Janice was diagnosed with incurable blood cancer. ‘We thought it was paradise, like being on a perpetual holiday,’ he said. ‘And then Janice got ill.’
In the final six weeks of her life, Janice’s condition worsened. ‘She couldn’t walk or stand. We slept on recliner chairs in the sitting room, side-by-side. I held her hand.
‘The pain got worse. Her skin was covered in lesions. She had terrible diarrhoea and wore adult nappies. Her hair was coming out in clumps, she ate very little and when she did she was sick. Every day she begged me, ‘Nothing will get better. I want you to help me die’. But whenever she pleaded I said no. I resisted.’
Then one evening in December 2021, he suffocated her and swallowed 60 prescription pills – anything he could find in the house – washed down with a bottle of brandy, hoping to join her in death. But he wanted a ‘last word’ with his younger brother William in England and called to tell him what he had done, asking him to tell Lesley.
He has scant recollection of these conversations but in a distressed video call, Lesley tearfully implored him: ‘Daddy, Daddy you can’t leave me… we really love you Daddy… we just want you safe.’
Meanwhile, William alerted Manchester police, who told Interpol, and within the hour Cypriot police were knocking on David’s door.
‘A bunch of policemen pushed me back inside and told me to sit there. I haven’t a clue about what I said. I just remember thinking about Janice and what I’d done. I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst enemy. It will go through my mind every day of my life.’ Befuddled and incoherent as he was, he recalls only brief snapshots from that night: ‘They put me in an ambulance, walked me into hospital and chained me to a bed.
David pictured with his wife Janice on their wedding day in 1969 after courting for about three years
David is still plagued by flashbacks to the terrible day in December 2021 when he suffocated his wife
‘An hour or more later, someone came in, ripped my clothes off and said ‘forensics’, then I was chained back up again. Every time I wanted to go to the toilet I had to ask one of the policemen who sat, for 12-hour shifts, at the end of my bed. I don’t remember having my stomach pumped, but apparently I did.’ The following days passed in a blur. He recalls a thunderous rainstorm, the worst he could remember on the island, and being given an old pair of far too big pink pyjamas.
‘I walked to a car, drenched to the skin. I was taken to a little room and sectioned. I was still soaking wet. I asked if they had something I could wipe myself down with, some dry clothes. I waited a few minutes. Then I was put in a wagon, still in wet pyjamas, and driven to a secure mental hospital in Nicosia [the island’s capital].
‘They put me in a padded cell with a plastic-covered foam mattress and gave me two cardboard bowls to go to the toilet in. On the third day they took me out and led me to a hall where I was given something to eat. I was wearing the same pyjamas for three days.’
His billet for the next ten days or so – his recollection of time passing is hazy – was a six-bed room in a secure psychiatric hospital.
David is a scrupulously tidy man, a stickler for cleanliness and order: the squalor, the chaos, the constant din, unnerved and upset him.
‘There were drug addicts, alcoholics; the crazy guy jabbering into his imaginary phone day and night. I just wanted to be on my own. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. My mind was still numb.’ I ask if he still wanted to die.
‘A psychiatrist asked me that on the second or third day. I said I didn’t. I’d realised by then how selfish I’d been to my daughter.
‘It was terrible for Lesley. I’d killed her mother, but she never blamed me. She knew what awful pain she was in. She knew how determined her mum was. Lesley kept saying how much she loved me. I knew I had to live for her.’
Then one evening in December 2021, he suffocated her and swallowed 60 prescription pills – anything he could find in the house – washed down with a bottle of brandy, hoping to join her in death
David Hunter, 76 from Northumberland, sits down with the Daily Mail’s Fiona Parker for an exclusive chat after he was released from Prison in Cyprus
No longer suicidal, he was discharged to Nicosia prison, to a holding cell, then into a quarantine area. ‘Sometimes there were three men in a two-bed room and one of us had to sleep on the floor.
‘A Syrian lad gave up his bottom bunk for me. Ninety-nine per cent of prisoners showed me respect and kindness.’
By January 5 he had been moved to a permanent cell – a room 5.5 metres by 12 which he shared with 11 men, among them murderers, drug addicts and thieves.
The suffocating proximity, the smell of bodies, noise, boredom, the scant, poor-quality food – they all took their toll. Weight fell off him and he lost two-and-a-half stone. When he stepped on the scales at the Paphos hotel where we met, he weighed just over ten stone. At just under 6ft, he looked gaunt, a shadow of the hale man he was. He has grown a beard – he apologised that it is not neatly barbered because razor blades were banned in prison. ‘One lad said he was going to slash his wrist. Another said he’d cut his throat. So the next day they took away our razors,’ he said.
Recurrent nightmares – flashbacks to the day he took Janice’s life – plagued him. He was given anti-depressants and sleeping tablets to counter the night horrors.
‘Death changed her face so quickly it frightened me,’ he said. ‘She had the most beautiful smile. I used to say she could have made a fortune advertising toothpaste. But when she died she went grey. Her jaw was twisted. That is the face that comes to me in nightmares.’
David first met Janice in his home village of Ashington, Northumberland, in the local pub
When the Hunters sold their home in Ashington in 2001 to live permanently in Paphos, life settled into a happy routine
He added: ‘The only things you were given in prison were toilet paper and food. Everything else you had to buy: toothbrush, tea, any medication you needed. All this came from my savings because the UK Government stopped paying my pension when I went to prison. I’d worked for over 40 years in the coal mine – from the fortune advertising toothpaste. But when she died she went grey. Her jaw was twisted. That is the face that comes to me in nightmares.’
He talks about the prison day: a main meal – perhaps a chicken leg with rice, couscous or boiled potatoes; invariably cold – served at 11am, then soup, pasta or rubbery calamari at 3.15pm.
‘The only things you were given in prison were toilet paper and food. Everything else you had to buy yourself: toothbrush, toothpaste, tea, coffee, deep-heat for paper and food. Everything else you had to buy: toothbrush, tea, any special medication you needed.
‘All this came from my savings because the UK Government stopped paying my pension when I went to prison.
‘I’d worked for over 40 years in the coal mine – from the age of 15 to 55 – and my pension was stopped.’ He continued: ‘Boredom was the worst thing: I was bored of being bored. I asked for books and it took seven weeks to get any. They arrived four at a time and once I’d read them, it was six weeks before I got more.
‘Every day I thought of Janice. I’d talk to her about what had gone on that day. I’d tell her, ‘I don’t know if I love you most or miss you most’. It sounds silly to some people. Not to me.’
For 56 years they loved each other; unconditionally, faithfully and with absolute devotion. It is hard to imagine the chasm of grief left by her death: they were a rarity, so committed they never tired of each other’s company.
Ten days before she died Janice was hysterical with pain and begged David again to end it
David pictured leaving Paphos District Court in Cyprus after he was released from custody by Cypriot prison authorities
When they met in Ashington as teenagers, David thought she was ‘the most beautiful girl in town’. He said: ‘From the moment I saw her, I never looked at another woman.’ His grief at missing her funeral while in jail is overwhelming.
‘They told me about her funeral but they did not offer to let me go. They would not even let me watch from a distance, see the casket. I was so mad I nearly lost my mind when they buried her.’ He said he is not a crier but he sobs quietly. The bleak monotony of prison was, he says, mitigated by his cellmates’ kindness. ‘They always called me Mr Dave. I’d say, ‘Just call me David’ but they wouldn’t. It was their way of showing respect.
‘No one was threatening. I wasn’t frightened. I made friends with one lad from Southampton who was in for a minor offence. When he was released I missed him.’
He is a mild-mannered man, instantly likeable, and it is easy to see how his cellmates warmed to him. He does not overstate the privations of prison. He did not baulk at the strip-searches whenever he had a visitor; he understood protocols.
READ MORE HERE: EXCLUSIVE: Emotional British husband David Hunter visits his wife’s grave for the first time and sobs ‘she can rest in peace now’ – hours after being freed from Cypriot prison for smothering her to death in mercy-killing
‘They strip-search you all the time, even if you met your lawyers, but it didn’t bother me. I used to strip down and wash in the communal showers at the coalmine and we’d scrub each other’s backs.’
The tedium of prison was punctuated by the awful tension of his court appearances: he made the 150-kilometre journey from Nicosia jail to Paphos court 27 times during his 19 months in custody.
Did he ever fear he would be imprisoned for life. ‘At one point I did. The prosecution seemed to twist everything I said. And then I’d build myself up to go to court and they’d cancel.’
What sustained him was the knowledge that his daughter Lesley, 50, was always fighting his corner from her home in England. She engaged barrister Michael Polak, Director of Justice Abroad, to defend him.
As we gathered to greet David after his release on Monday – he celebrated modestly with a glass of shandy – Mr Polak was as jubilant and surprised as anyone.
‘When David received the two-year sentence, we calculated he’d be released in a few months,’ said Mr Polak. ‘But as we sat in the court café waiting to visit him in the cells, he came up behind us, free and beaming with joy. The prison service had determined he was to be freed immediately.’
Now David is planning the rest of his life; his relief and happiness clouded by the knowledge that the only woman he has ever loved is no longer with him.
‘I’ll go to England to visit Lesley – she’s my first responsibility now – see my brother and the lads I worked with at the mine. They’ve all supported me and I can’t say how grateful I am.
‘I thought at one point I’d go back to England to live but it was a burden on me. So I came to the conclusion I’d stay in Cyprus and find a place to rent near Janice’s grave so I can visit every day. I want to be near her. I can’t ever leave her.’ He cries. ‘I’ve made my mind up about that.’
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