HIS final plea to his father was not to enter his bedroom but to call the police. Fearful, he ignored it, and pushing open the door, discovered to his horror why - his daughter-in-law had been battered to death.
Within hours, detectives called off a murder hunt. The obvious suspect, her husband, had cycled to the top Southampton school where he taught and killed himself.
“I had reached a point of despair where it was impossible to continue,” Geoffrey Smith, 35, wrote of his motive in a suicide letter to his father, Sidney, who had been staying the weekend with them.
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Smith, who taught French at King Edward VI school in Hill Lane, had become increasingly fraught over the mental health of his French-born wife, Nicole, who he believed was approaching a nervous breakdown. Had it happened, it would have “ruined everyone’s lives.”
It had almost driven him to contemplating murdering his seriously ill father but also their two-year-old daughter, Catherine. “Originally I was going to kill Nicole, then you and then Catherine, so that the three people I love most dearly would all be gone together with no-one to grieve. When it came to it, I couldn’t do it.”
The horrifying tragedy happened on May 13, 1982, after the couple had gone to bed.
The following morning, his father rushed into the room of the house in Gordon Avenue, Southampton, and found his daughter-in-law dead on a bloodstained bed. She had suffered catastrophic head injuries inflicted with a three pound shell case. Her body had been wrapped in blankets and bedding and a plastic bag had also been wrapped over her head.
He immediately called the emergency services and told a young French woman who had also been staying at the property what had happened. Police were quickly at the scene and examined two letters, one in English to his father and the other in French to their house guest, in which he poured out his feelings of despair.
Murder squad detectives then launched a three-hour search for Smith, visiting homes of friends and work colleagues but with no success. They then switched their inquiry to the school, which being a Sunday, was closed, and in a room they found his body.
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“We are not looking for anyone in connection with either of these deaths,” a police spokesman confirmed.
Smith and his wife, who was an unemployed French teacher, had moved to Gordon Avenue the previous year, and neighbours spoke of a family who kept themselves to themselves and lived very quietly.
Home Office pathologist Dr Peter Pullar carried out a post-mortem on both bodies and delivered his report to the city coroner Michael Emanuel who conducted an inquest on June 17. He ruled Smith had taken his own life after unlawfully killing his wife with the shell case which was recovered in the bedroom.
“He must have been in very great distress,” the coroner commented. “It was an extremely violent attack. He must have been a very highly strung person who kept his problems very much to himself.”
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