A mother-of-four has been jailed for six years after stabbing her husband to death, before telling a police worker: “The kids will never forgive me for killing their father.”
As we reported, Louisa Anderson inflicted a single knife wound to the calf of her husband Douglas’s right leg which resulted in heavy blood loss after they were heard arguing at their home following a night out.
She later revealed: “I didn’t mean to kill him. It was in the leg. He wasn’t meant to die.”
A judge told Anderson: “This was not an offence committed against a background of a violent marriage for you and your husband appear to have been happily married and indeed had renewed your marriage vows.”
Lord Uist told her at the High Court in Edinburgh: “You will now have to live with the fact that you unjustifiably took his life.”
He added: “I accept that you have been profoundly affected by what you did and have shown considerable remorse.”
But he continued: “You must understand that the crime which you committed involved the taking of another person’s life by the use of a lethal weapon, even though you had no intention to kill him.”
Lord Uist pointed out that it was not the first time that Anderson, who has previous convictions for assault, had used a knife to inflict injury on another.
The judge said he had been informed through a background report that Anderson had anger management issues and her actions during the attack on her husband were “impulsive”.
He pointed out that Anderson was very drunk and the fatal assault occurred following an argument about her husband’s sister.
Lord Uist told her: “You must have acquired the knife, which was a substantial one, before using it on him in the upstairs bedroom.”
He said that if Anderson had been convicted of the offence after a trial he would have jailed her for nine years, but her sentence would be reduced following her early guilty plea.
She was originally charged with murdering her husband on February 25 this year at the home they shared in Dunnock Park, Perth, but the Crown earlier accepted her guilty plea to the reduced charge of culpable homicide by striking him on the leg with a knife and killing him.
