A former Basingstoke man who stabbed his high-flying executive wife more than 30 times in a jealous rage has been found guilty of manslaughter. Alisdair Sinclair, 48, killed his wife Sally Sinclair, 40, in the kitchen of their £1millon rented home in Amport, near Andover, on August 16 last year.
The house husband ran at his wife of 21 years after she had admitted having an affair. Several knives were used in the attack, which was partly witnessed by children. A jury at Winchester Crown Court took seven hours to find Sinclair, of Georgia Lane, Amport, guilty of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility. He was cleared of murder.
Psychiatrist Dr Frank Farnham had told the trial that Sinclair had suffered bouts of depression from the early 1980s, and at the time of the attack was suffering a depressive episode. Sinclair had moved to Basingstoke from Scotland when he was 13-years-old, and later lived with his wife Sally in Chepstow, South Wales before moving to Amport.
Mrs Sinclair was head of business analysis at Vodafone in Newbury at the time of the attack. He will be sentenced at Winchester Crown Court tomorrow.
After the conviction, Simon Edwards, senior Crown advocate for Crown Prosecution Service Hampshire and Isle of Wight, said: "Sally Sinclair died in the most violent way. "It was our job to prove that Alisdair Sinclair killed her unlawfully, which we did. "The jury's verdict today reflects that he suffered from a mental illness that subsequently impaired his culpability." Basingstoke Gazette reported online on 29th Oct 2009.
