JACQUELINE Patrick had the Christmas Day murder carefully planned.
Fed up with the constant arguments with her husband Douglas she handed him a cherry Lambrini, laced with deadly antifreeze.
She’d researched the drug online and even spoke with the couple’s daughter, Katherine, 21, about her plans. Prosecutors believed Jacqueline Patrick, 55, had hoped her husband’s death would look like a suicide attempt.
But one small mistake gave the game away.
She wrote the fake note, purportedly from her husband, which told of not wanting to “be revived” and his desire to die with dignity — except dignity was spelt wrong, as dignaty.
Police asked her to spell the word, and she made the same mistake. Their suspicions were confirmed when they discovered her online search for the drug and text messages she’d exchanged with her daughter where they talked about the plot.
I got the stuff I will give him some later delete txt tell no one OK” one message read. Another said: “He feels sick again I gave him more delete this.”
In total he’d drunk two-and-a-half glasses of the drugged drink.
Another message said: “I’ll give a little at first I brought it so no one else gets involved.”
Jacqueline Patrick tried to explain her internet searches about the effects of antifreeze poisoning by saying a friend’s dog had accidentally consumed some. But the friend in question had never owned a dog.
When Mr Patrick got sick, she called for an ambulance to their south London home and suggested the a cause of her husband being unwell could be kidney trouble, which he’d had before.
And she handed them the “do not resuscitate” note she had written — spelling mistake included.
Tests in hospital confirmed he was suffering from antifreeze poisoning, and called police when Jacqueline Patrick said she thought he may have drunk it by mistake.
Her plan began to unravel from there. After several days in a coma Mr Patrick woke up and began a year of learning to walk and talk again.
The court heard Patrick poured her husband about two-and-a-half glasses of the spiked drink on Christmas Day 2013.
Detective Inspector Tracey Miller, from Lambeth police, told The Guardian: “Mr Patrick came very close to dying and while he lay in his hospital bed fighting for his life, his wife told lie after lie to cover her tracks. Perhaps most shocking of all was the note she gave to the London Ambulance Service purporting to be from her husband, stating that he did not wish to be resuscitated.”
The court heard Mr Patrick had not wanted to pursue a case against his wife and daughter and did not want to see them put in prison.
In a statement he said: “I will never get over it. It broke me. I’m just a shell now. This was a person I was married to for over 25 years. A person I loved and love.”
Jacqueline Park was jailed for 15 years after she pleaded guilty to attempted murder while her daughter was jailed for three years, after admitting inciting another to administer a noxious substance.
Her lawyer Julia Flanagan tried to convince the court her client had been “physically chastised” by her father when she was young and even as an adult was “overly reliant” on her mother.
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