A woman who murdered her 84-year-old husband with a small paring knife and told police he must have stumbled and fallen onto the blade while carrying her lunch tray has been jailed for life with a minimum of 12 years, after a jury rejected her account of an accident for the second time.
Daryl Berman, 72, was convicted of murdering retired businessman David Berman at their £500,000 detached home in Butterstile Lane, Prestwich, Greater Manchester, on 13 March last year. A first jury was unable to reach a verdict, but following a retrial last month she was found guilty of murder. Judge Tina Langdale sentenced her at Minshull Street Crown Court, telling Berman she accepted she had not set out to kill her husband but was satisfied she had stabbed him deliberately and intended to cause him serious harm, even though she “immediately regretted” what she had done.
“I am satisfied that something must have happened that caused you to lose your patience or temper and caused you to attack David with a knife that you had earlier used for your lunch,” Judge Langdale said.
The story Berman told police and paramedics was that she had been in the lounge when she heard her husband — who had retired from a 60-year career as a self-employed joiner only six months earlier — stumble in the kitchen while carrying her tray. She said she rushed in to find him face down in a pool of blood, and initially mistook the blood for gravy. In a 999 call played to the jury, she told the operator: “I was in the other room. He’s carried a tray in. And all I can see is the tray. I think there was a knife — I don’t know whether the little knife that was there has gone into him and stabbed him. I really don’t know what happened.”
But forensic pathologist Dr Philip Lumb told the court that Mr Berman had suffered a single horizontal stab wound to the right side of the chest measuring up to 12cm deep, and that the force required to cause it would have been “severe.” He said the blade would have needed to be held “fixed” in place to penetrate the chest, and that taken together with a defensive wound to Mr Berman’s right middle finger, it was “inconceivable” the injuries were anything other than homicide. A defence pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd — who said he had previously worked on investigations into the deaths of Princess Diana and Stephen Lawrence — argued the circumstances could not exclude accident, but accepted under cross-examination that they were “unusual and difficult.”
The jury was also presented with evidence about Berman’s behaviour in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s death. As paramedics worked on the dying great-grandfather, she asked a police officer: “You don’t think I’ve murdered him, do you?” Relatives described her as “matter-of-fact” and “emotionless” in the hours that followed. She wrote the words “bye, bye” on a wall calendar on the date of his death and appeared “untroubled” about going back into the kitchen where he had bled to death. A neighbour had also heard her complain about her husband’s recent dementia diagnosis, saying: “This is my life now.”
Police initially treated the death as an accident and only launched a murder investigation after a pathologist raised concerns about the injuries.
In a victim personal statement read to the court, Mr Berman’s son, also named Daryl, said his life had “changed dramatically” since his father’s death and that he felt “cheated and deprived” at not having been able to say goodbye. His daughter Debbie Davis said the loss had left “a massive void,” adding: “I feel like I am living in my own nightmare or a television programme because things like this are not normal.”
Neighbours on the quiet, tree-lined street of 1930s houses described David Berman as “kind-hearted” and “a gentleman.” Debora Strong, who has lived in the area for more than 40 years, told the Daily Mail: “He was really lovely.” By contrast, they said his wife was more distant, often speaking to neighbours from behind the front door. Mr Berman and Daryl had met on a blind date and married in 1997, with their nearly 30-year union described as “loving and mutually supportive.” There was no history of domestic violence in the marriage.
Asked at trial by her barrister Michael Hayton KC whether she had murdered her husband of 27 years, Berman replied: “Why would I do that to the man I love? No.”
