A British woman accused of murdering her 84-year-old husband wrote “bye bye” accompanied by two kisses and a heart on a calendar entry for the day he died, a court heard this week.
Daryl Berman, 71, is on trial in Manchester over the death of her husband, David Berman, who was found dead by a stab wound in their home in Prestwich in March.
Daryl, a former nurse, denies the allegations, insisting that her husband accidentally fell on a knife in their kitchen, as per People Magazine.
Speaking from the witness box for the first time in her defence, she said, “I saw David lying face down. He wasn't moving, and he was gurgling,” she said, as per a local news outlet, adding, “I think I froze. I was in shock. I was kneeling down saying ‘David, David.' I was beside myself.”
She told jurors that she called 999 and attempted to follow instructions from the operator while waiting for paramedics. She said she spent much of the day with family members but returned several times to lie beside her husband. “I lay down next to David. I kissed him and I stroked his arm. I did it quite a few times,” she said.
She said she added the calendar entry later that day. “It has got ‘bye bye' and it has got two kisses, and it has got a heart. I put it on at the end of the day when everybody had gone and I was ready to go up to bed,” she explained.
She said that she had written similar messages on her calendar for the anniversaries of her late parents' deaths.
Prosecutors allege that Daryl deliberately stabbed her husband in the chest. “Absolutely not,” she replied when asked if she had any involvement in his death. When pressed by her barrister, Michael Hayton KC, about murdering her husband, she said, “I did not.”
The trial also heard that the Bermans' marriage had been “loving and mutually supportive” with no prior history of domestic violence or police involvement. Daryl described her husband as struggling with forgetting things and poor balance in the months before his death.
On the day of the incident, Daryl Berman went shopping in Manchester while her husband visited a soft play centre. She said she prepared lunch, which he microwaved, and the accident happened when he offered to take her tray into the kitchen. The trial continues.
