‘I asked “Are you ready?” and she said “Yes, I won’t make a noise”‘: Husband, 73, tells how he slit his terminally-ill wife’s throat after they shared a last drink together in their garden as he is cleared of her murder

He slit her throat in March last year then unsuccessfully tried to kill himself. In an interview at his home in Hale, Greater Manchester, Mr Mansfield said his wife was informed she had stage four lung cancer in October 2020, just weeks after they’d celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary.

When they returned home from the hospital, Mr Mansfield said the suicide pact was first raised. Mrs Mansfield asked her husband if he would be willing to kill her if things got ‘too bad’.

He agreed ‘on one condition’. Mr Mansfield said: ‘I said I would have to go with her. I said “I can’t live without you Dyanne”.

‘In a funny way it gave me strength. I knew I was dying as well. I could focus on that.’

The couple met in their local pub in Woodhouse Park in Wythenshawe on New Year’s Eve in 1974 and were married six years later.