Gordon Cole QC secures guilty verdict in murder trial

October 15, 2019

In a case prosecuted by Gordon Cole QC from Exchange Chambers, a man who brutally bludgeoned his wife to death with a crowbar has been found guilty of murder.

David Pomphret, 51, struck his wife, Ann Marie, more than 30 times in a ‘frenzied attack’ at their horse stables near their home in Winwick, Cheshire, on November 2, last year.

The Barclays bank worker, who was described as a ‘quiet man’, claimed he had suffered a temporary loss of control and should only be found guilty of manslaughter.

But a jury at Liverpool Crown Court found him guilty of murder on Friday after a 10-day trial.

Pomphret denied he planned the murder and then tried to cover his tracks, before he was released on bail. But his wife’s airborne blood was found on his socks he had forgotten to change – which put him at the scene of the crime.

The jury was told how Pomphret had to change his story and later admitted to the court ‘I killed the woman I loved’.

He blamed his wife’s ‘volatile’ behaviour during their 22-year marriage and claimed he was at ‘breaking point’ but remembered nothing of the attack.

Gordon Cole QC, prosecuting, told the jury that if it weren’t for the socks there would be no forensic evidence linking him to the crime scene. It was heard how he had washed the blood off his hands, thrown the crowbar into a pond and burned then discarded his bloodstained clothes.

Judge David Aubrey told Pomphret he would set the minimum term before the defendant is eligible for parole when he passes sentence next Tuesday.

The case received extensive coverage from the national press including The Times and BBC news.

Gordon is a member of the criminal team at Exchange Chambers.