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In the days before her husband stabbed her to death on July 25, 2013, Melissa Richmond was worn down and torn about ending her troubled marriage, but in the end she decided it was the best, most honest thing to do.
Her words, drawn from her texts and testimony from her secret lover, were heard by the jury on Friday at her husband’s first-degree murder trial. Howard Richmond, 52, has admitted to killing Melissa, 28, after a midnight rendezvous in the parking lot of the South Keys Shopping Centre, a 30-minute drive from their big home in Winchester, just south of Ottawa.
His defence team has urged the jury to find him not criminally responsible because he was in the throes of chronic post-traumatic stress disorder and couldn’t form the intent to kill, let alone know it was wrong. Richmond was diagnosed with PTSD in 2011 after witnessing too many horrors on the battlefield.
Melissa texted her lover, Jeff Thornton, saying she felt like she had just run a marathon and was “tired, worn down and done”, and, at the same time, said metaphorically that her husband was just starting the race when she was already out of breath at the finish line.
“I’m so tired and beaten down,” she texted Thornton. “I keep going back and forth.”
She didn’t know whether to leave him or not.
And, the jury heard, Howard Richmond tried to make it easy for her to leave.
In a proposed separation offer, the jury heard that Richmond agreed to cover all of Melissa’s debt, sign over his military pension and buy her a new car.
She told her mother she was scared about making ends meet on her own, and told Thornton that she was terrified to live alone for the first time in her life.
The jury heard earlier this week that Melissa also feared that her husband would kill her if he ever found out about what Ontario Superior Court Justice Douglas Rutherford described as a “torrid” affair. Richmond stabbed his wife to death with a screwdriver and knife, and left her body in a ditch just after midnight on July 25, 2013. He reported her missing the next day.
In the days after he killed his wife, he presented himself to police as a grieving husband bent on killing his wife’s killer, the jury has heard.
The trial continues Monday with Thornton back on the stand.
gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com
www.twitter.com/crimegarden
查看原文...
Her words, drawn from her texts and testimony from her secret lover, were heard by the jury on Friday at her husband’s first-degree murder trial. Howard Richmond, 52, has admitted to killing Melissa, 28, after a midnight rendezvous in the parking lot of the South Keys Shopping Centre, a 30-minute drive from their big home in Winchester, just south of Ottawa.
His defence team has urged the jury to find him not criminally responsible because he was in the throes of chronic post-traumatic stress disorder and couldn’t form the intent to kill, let alone know it was wrong. Richmond was diagnosed with PTSD in 2011 after witnessing too many horrors on the battlefield.
Melissa texted her lover, Jeff Thornton, saying she felt like she had just run a marathon and was “tired, worn down and done”, and, at the same time, said metaphorically that her husband was just starting the race when she was already out of breath at the finish line.
“I’m so tired and beaten down,” she texted Thornton. “I keep going back and forth.”
She didn’t know whether to leave him or not.
And, the jury heard, Howard Richmond tried to make it easy for her to leave.
In a proposed separation offer, the jury heard that Richmond agreed to cover all of Melissa’s debt, sign over his military pension and buy her a new car.
She told her mother she was scared about making ends meet on her own, and told Thornton that she was terrified to live alone for the first time in her life.
The jury heard earlier this week that Melissa also feared that her husband would kill her if he ever found out about what Ontario Superior Court Justice Douglas Rutherford described as a “torrid” affair. Richmond stabbed his wife to death with a screwdriver and knife, and left her body in a ditch just after midnight on July 25, 2013. He reported her missing the next day.
In the days after he killed his wife, he presented himself to police as a grieving husband bent on killing his wife’s killer, the jury has heard.
The trial continues Monday with Thornton back on the stand.
gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com
www.twitter.com/crimegarden
查看原文...
