[ 2011-06-14 ]

Wife 'blugeoned husband over infidelity fears'
Georgina Challen, 57, allegedly set about retired
businessman Richard with a hammer after becoming
convinced his bid to rescue their 31-year marriage
was simply a “ruse” to get access to her
money.

Guildford Crown Court heard how the wealthy,
separated couple had met up at their former
marital home in Ruxley Ridge, Claygate near Esher,
Surrey, to prepare for a make or break trip to
Australia.

But after becoming suspicious that her husband was
seeing another woman, Challen, a mother-of-two,
allegedly sneaked up behind the 61-year-old former
car dealer and unleashed a frenzied hammer attack
on him.

After wrapping his bloodied body in a pair of
curtains, she left a note on his body that read,
'I love you, Sally', the court heard.

Challen, who is also known as Sally, then drafted
a suicide note before driving 70 miles to Beachy
Head where she rang a relative and threatened to
jump.


After being talked down and arrested she allegedly
told police: “It was all a game so he could get
everything…If I can’t have him, no-one
can.”

At the beginning of a murder trial, which is
expected to last two weeks, the jury were told
that despite living apart the couple had been
attempting to patch up their differences when Mr
Challen was bludgeoned to death.

Opening the case for the prosecution, Caroline
Carberry, said Challen had become convinced that
her husband’s attempts at a reconciliation were
"part of his game to get everything” after he
persuaded her to sign a ‘post-nuptial’
agreement.

On Saturday August 14, the court heard her "anger
boiled into rage" after she discovered her husband
had spoken on the phone to a woman he had met
through a website called Dinner Dates.

The jury were told there was no evidence he had
conducted an intimate relationship with anyone
else during this time, but Challen was consumed by
"jealousy and suspicion".

Miss Carberry explained: "She made her husband
some lunch and, as he ate, she fetched a hammer
which she had brought to the address from her
handbag and hit him repeatedly over the head in
what was an attack of extreme ferocity."

She added: "Taking a weapon from the tool box at
her home, as she told police, and bringing it that
day to Ruxley Ridge indicates, you might think,
some degree of planning or premeditation.

"At the time she killed him, she believed that he
was having an affair and that his attempts at a
reconciliation were a ruse."

The next day, she made her way to Beachy Head,
from where she called her cousin to admit the
crime, jurors heard.

When a suicide team and chaplain were dispatched
to the cliff top, she repeated the admission and
said she was "certain" her husband was dead.

"When asked how it happened, she said: 'I killed
him with a hammer. I hit him lots of times'. She
added: ‘If I can't have him, no-one can'.”

The court was told that Challen, will claim she
was suffering from diminished responsibility at
the time of the killing.

But Miss Carberry said she had “exhibited
behaviour” which was “all too common among
people whose relationships are under strain:
spying, checking emails, phone messages, feelings
of jealously, insecurity, anger and suspicion”.

She added: “Those activities and emotions are
understandable but on August 14 last year, her
anger boiled into rage causing her to murder her
husband. In her own words: 'If I can't have him, I
don't want anyone else to'.”

Throughout the evidence Challen, who was wearing a
black and white dress and grey cardigan, sat
impassively in the dock.

She denies murder the trial continues.

Source - The Telegraph

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