00:00:09
they appeared the perfect family living happily in the pretty english market town of aylesbury but behind the closed
00:00:16
doors a different more sinister story years of systemic abuse and evidence of a long slow murder
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beatings with blunt objects blood spat is found on the ceiling there was blood found on the walls and blood found on
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furniture because i was so angry with him i punched him on his nose there's no emotion as far as she's
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concerned what she's done is rational reasonable and she's just giving a
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professional account of it did he cower away from you was he scared of you the donnelly marriage begins well but
00:00:48
there's will be no small town fairy tale this was a totally callous woman who
00:00:54
physically abused her husband abuse bullying and coercive control she was evil an abc of murder
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[Music] few pictures of the marriage of hannah donnelly and her husband christopher
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exist and none which have leaked into the public domain hanograft's image was though to become
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familiar to oxfordshire police as they probed what had happened within her marriage by
00:01:38
2018. hannah grete was in her 50s and she was married to christopher they've
00:01:44
been married since about 1992. they have four children they both have successful
00:01:49
careers her as a midwife him as a musician he'd worked as a music teacher for a long time and performed as well he
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was around the same age a year older than his wife [Music] all the reports are that they lived a
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very insular existence and really didn't associate with neighbours or anything particularly such
00:02:12
as that on paper christopher and hannah grete donnelly appeared to have what many long
00:02:17
for so on the face of it it's a very normal almost wholesome family life but
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at the heart of it is this relationship that is far from healthy it's a relationship that is based on
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hanagrit's absolute power absolute power with an emphasis on religion they were a religious family with deeply
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held beliefs they apparently had some type of view around there being an end of day's
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existence they shunned modern technology theirs was a house with no phone no internet and a family that didn't need a
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school teaching was to be hannahgrant's job it is possible of course for families to be
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very happy and self-sufficient to homeschool their own children to avoid the evils of the internet and
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modern technology but it also makes it much much more difficult for any authorities to keep an eye on what's
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going on and to raise concerns if they see anything out of the ordinary so her children we hear very little of they are
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kept behind closed doors the donnelly household is a very unusual one hanagret has created
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a household that's almost like a separate land it's a land under her dominion it's a land where she hanagaret
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has absolute power and like any territory under absolute dictatorial control it's one where she keeps a very firm
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hold on the infiltration of of any external influences so there's there's no
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technology allowed the children are homeschooled it's not just a physical but it's actually a psychological
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fortress that she has created here within your family what would you say your role is
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a fortress was exactly what hannah grete wanted a dominion over which she had complete control
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i'd like to know what's going on to be informed as to what is going on i
00:04:23
don't like like my people talk behind my back and a bit upset when i feel that there's
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some sort of things going on that that i'm not told about and when she got upset hannahgrant
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became abusive violently so to her husband what is clear here is that the level of control
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and the level of abuse made this an almost everyday occurrence a level of abuse that had simply become
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accepted the actions here are unquestionably the actions of an abuser what's unusual is that that abuse does
00:05:08
not seem to be motivated as we might expect by any kind of anger or hatred of her victim but rather by an
00:05:16
unquestioning belief in her own absolute authority that absolute authority would cost
00:05:26
christopher dearly hanagret waged a campaign of violence which intensified between 2017 and 2018
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when christopher became disabled unable to walk and increasingly dependent on his violent wife
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a fact which appears to have triggered hannahgret to further abuse christopher i punched him on his nose
00:05:48
severely because i was so angry with him but he didn't have such a big cut he
00:05:52
took he had just a small cut we know that christopher stopped working as a music teacher in 2015 due to ill health
00:06:00
and we can only assume that some of that ill health was as a result of hanagaret's treatment of him his mental
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health began to suffer and what's particularly distressing about this case is the knowledge that hanagret
00:06:15
was abusing her husband at the very time when he needed her support so gradually
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christopher became weaker not just physically but mentally until he wasn't able to defend himself at all
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her husband initially was a talented musician but quite clearly over time became more and
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more and more weak and became a shadow of his former self it very much seems that she was the one in charge whether
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at the beginning of their relationship there was ever any evenness is difficult to know but certainly by the end he was
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nothing more than a punching bag for her what's interesting in this case is it
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seems to me towards the end of his life christopher became very very ill and required an awful lot of care from his
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wife it's often the case that when that happens the dynamic between a married
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couple will change significantly the fact that their health has failed to so much that they're having to do
00:07:10
everything for them can cause an enormous amount of resentment violence within an abusive relationship rarely
00:07:15
stays the same experts agree that once a line is crossed the violent partner often tests how far they can push it
00:07:23
either escalating the ferocity of the violence or the frequency of the attacks creating a new and deeper level of power
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and control over their victim hanagaret's behaviour clearly escalated over the years
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and and in conjunction with that her husband became weaker both physically and mentally which meant that the effect
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of what she was doing was exacerbated during police interviews hannahgret dismissed a lot of her behaviour as as
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just banter she talked about chasing her husband around a table she talked about
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playfully hitting him with a rolling pin it's arguable whether any of that is
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indeed banter or playful behavior but what is certain is that her abuse got significantly worse towards um towards
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the end first of all i tried to sort of sort things out with him in in sort of a
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angering sort of way and so yeah if i hit you with a rolling pin maybe you come out of your trance also
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[Music] rolling pins are heavy objects and they come down with very considerable force
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they could easily break bones they could easily break a skull and even cause bleeding inside the brain with every
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subsequent act of violence that she inflicted upon her husband he was weakened and therefore the next act of
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violence became even more impactful was even more uh powerful had an even more powerful effect she reduced him over
00:09:01
time almost to the state of a wounded animal after 32 years of marriage christopher
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was wounded weakened and trapped in a house cut off from the outside world there was nothing to stop hannahgret's
00:09:14
violence from intensifying it hit him a bit harder sometimes for christopher a 55 year old man
00:09:28
to have been subjected to such abuse which led to so much scar tissue that even a home office pathologist was
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shocked march 31 2017 and oxfordshire emergency services receive a call the first that the emergency services
00:09:52
knew about christopher's death was when they received a call from hannahgratt
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using her neighbor's phone to say that her husband had died the night before when they attended they
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found christopher clearly dead on the bathroom floor with a significant number of injuries
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the post-mortem revealed that he'd almost certainly died around 12 hours previously but hannah grete hadn't
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called the police until the following day police and ambulance i think turned up at the same time
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and she admitted that she had assaulted him at some point in the past and as a result of that she was arrested
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there was a head injury and there were i think suggestions that there was evidence of other injuries
00:10:36
that were perhaps slightly more historic hanagrat told them that she had attempted to revive her husband
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there was a mystery here for the police to solve this was not a natural death although
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that is exactly what hannah gretz had implied when she called the ambulance in the first phase of the investigation
00:10:57
it was not clear that christopher had been murdered the challenge for detectives was to
00:11:04
uncover what had happened to christopher donnelly there was a number of crucial findings within the home which actually
00:11:10
did point towards this being a long-running systemic abuse there was blood spatters found on the ceiling
00:11:16
there was blood found on the walls and blood found on furniture which clearly indicated this isn't just
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somebody who's got ill and died once inside the home police found evidence of barbarity seasoned experts
00:11:30
were horrified by what they saw the pathologist said after the postmortem that he'd never seen a case
00:11:38
with so many injuries having been received over such a long period of time he was found to have 78 separate and
00:11:46
identifiable injuries and they were some serious head injuries ear injuries his voice boxer
00:11:53
cartilage had been fractured really a terrible litany of awful awful injuries there was evidence of a pressure point a
00:12:02
single thumb to his windpipe that indicated that he had been partially strangulated the sheer number
00:12:10
of injuries tell me that the violence was sustained but was part of their ongoing interaction it was the way in
00:12:20
which she related to her husband it was becoming clear to police that violence was normal within this home so
00:12:26
normal that hannah grete thought nothing of admitting her assaults to the authorities
00:12:31
these times that you've hit him um they weren't a result of him being violent to you
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no or was he or being aggressive towards you no hannahgren then mentioned to the
00:12:48
police almost casually that she'd hit christopher with a rolling pin some weeks previously and it was at that
00:12:55
point that the police grew suspicious of her behavior and arrested her in fact the extent of his injuries was such that
00:13:04
his body just couldn't cope with it officially christopher had died from what can be natural causes he basically
00:13:12
died of pneumonia which meant that his body was in such a physically weakened position
00:13:20
that his immune system simply could not fight it off domestic violence can be very difficult
00:13:26
to prove but in cases of unexplained deaths within the home police always look to the spouse
00:13:33
detectives in the case of crown v hanogrant donnelly faced a tough challenge to gain a successful
00:13:38
prosecution death by pneumonia is not usually associated with murder early on in the interview with hannah
00:13:47
grete detectives realized they needed to link christopher's pneumonia to the
00:13:51
violence that he'd suffered do you feel that hitting him over the head with a rolling
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pin with a hairbrush using your hands and fists is a appropriate reaction to him
00:14:06
acting in that way being in his strange moods it's it's more like this helping him
00:14:18
to come out of some sort of peculiar trans translation no i can't say it's a trance
00:14:25
but it's sort of peculiar yeah feeling feeling strangely i don't know hannah talks about
00:14:37
her husband going into a trance i think that's really very likely i think it's
00:14:41
very likely that he learnt to disassociate himself once the violence started the trance that hannah grete talks about
00:14:49
trying to knock him out of is actually one that she has brought about by the violence itself
00:14:55
hannah grete was candid with detectives she was arguing that she had not intended any harm to her husband she
00:15:02
wanted to just shake him up from what she saw as laziness she was very open she fully admitted that you know she
00:15:08
often should punch him she admitted hitting him with with a rolling pin she admitted pushing
00:15:13
him down the stairs neil lancaster spent 25 years as a detective in the metropolitan police
00:15:20
leading investigations into some of the country's most heinous crimes what does
00:15:24
he think hannahgrad's police interview reveals it was um it was quite disturbing to
00:15:30
watch she was incredibly calm not visibly distressed and almost matter-of-fact in
00:15:38
she actually described what had happened at the house in almost a forensic level
00:15:43
of detail she came across as incredibly cold and detached did he cower away from
00:15:49
you was he scared of you do you see what i mean it was more like something had a chase
00:15:55
around the kitchen table or something it was more yeah sometimes just uh yeah sorry when you say it around the kitchen
00:16:04
table it's in in a more sort of light-hearted we okay and how did that end up with you
00:16:10
i don't know it was just feeling offended that he didn't take take what i said to him seriously
00:16:19
as the interview goes on detectives uncovered a diary one which documented the abuse after the police arrested
00:16:27
hanagaret they seized her diary and among the entries in there was clear evidence of abuse not least the fact
00:16:34
that hannah grete had refused to let her husband go to the toilet this withholding of a basic human need is
00:16:41
particularly cruel it's not just controlling but it's um it's dehumanizing and it's a
00:16:49
particularly shocking part of this case this keeping of a diary is just another facet of the control of maintaining the
00:16:57
control this documenting this it's as if providing the proof of what she's had to
00:17:02
do bolsters her authority do you feel that you you're justified in hitting him
00:17:07
like that still no there isn't justification for that but it was um like trying to
00:17:20
sort of reset something in him hannahgret donnelly's police interviews are truly chilling i don't think i've
00:17:28
ever heard a criminal talk in such a dispassionate way about such a horrific crime she dismisses her actions as as
00:17:37
banter and as normal behavior in a relationship and really shows no sign of compassion or
00:17:46
love for the man that she's killed we had a chase around the kitchen table in a more sort of light-hearted way okay
00:17:54
and how did that end up with you i don't know it was just feeling offended that she didn't take
00:18:02
take what i said to him seriously hanagrat was admitting to being violent but she was down playing it it was just
00:18:11
banter between husband and wife to succeed in proving this was murder could police prove this was not a
00:18:18
light-hearted banter to prove that she intended to cause real harm to her husband and by doing so considerably
00:18:26
weaken his condition so leaving him prey to something like pneumonia what was her beef with her husband
00:18:33
christopher what was her motive within your family what would you say your role is
00:18:40
i'd like to know what's going on so to be informed as to what is going on i
00:18:49
don't like like when people talk behind my back bit upset when i feel that there's
00:18:58
some sort of things going on that that i'm not told about it sounds very much as if this woman was
00:19:06
paranoid she was absolutely determined to be in control at all times and she didn't like
00:19:13
any secrets going on now that paranoia might have meant that she felt that people were scheming behind her back
00:19:19
heaven knows they had reason to try and scheme and get away so it was all part of this idea of keeping control this was
00:19:26
clearly a woman who was terrified of losing control hannahgret had clearly lost touch with any shred of common
00:19:35
decency she would beat christopher if he didn't answer a question quickly enough or if
00:19:42
she felt he was in some kind of trance she was evil she terrified him and she ran that house
00:19:52
through fear and intimidation within the fortress hannahgrade had created in the donnelly's home
00:20:00
she was in charge for christopher there was no hope of escape but was there hope for justice
00:20:06
barely a third of domestic abuse cases attended by the police end with the abuser being charged would hanagret
00:20:12
donnelly get away with murder once you arrest someone you've only got initially
00:20:18
24 hours with which to deal with them you've either got to charge them or you've got to release them they need to
00:20:23
prove that she caused really serious harm to him and she intended to cause really serious harm to him
00:20:31
that would then prove murder he tripped over and and fell and he fell against the crate
00:20:43
there was a crate and the crate got broken and then he cut himself in the head quite badly
00:20:53
for police in oxfordshire england a question had they been called to the scene of a man who had died from
00:20:59
pneumonia or had he perished because of weakness caused by years of abuse at the
00:21:04
hands of his wife was this developing story emerging from an ordinary english home on a standard
00:21:09
housing estate one of repeated violence by wife on husband one of murder when police looked in more
00:21:17
detail at the donnelly's house they found blood spatters in almost every room they were on the window dressings
00:21:25
on furniture on the walls and all that blood came from christopher donnelly evidence of violence itself may not be
00:21:36
conclusive enough for a murder charge but detectives felt that it was enough to make a move against hannah donnelly
00:21:42
she was charged with a wounding which is contrary to section 18 of the offences against the persons act
00:21:48
what that essentially means is that she caused a really serious injury to him with intent and she meant to do it
00:21:54
investigators felt that a confession was the most reliable route to a murder charge and so provide justice for
00:22:01
christopher donnelly they began putting all of their evidence on the table and probing why mysterious things had
00:22:07
happened like when christopher allegedly fell down the stairs but if you're on
00:22:11
the landing and you've obviously had to reach to push him does that mean he's fallen down the hole
00:22:19
pretty much the whole flight of stairs no no as i said he he walked a bit faster than sort of pushed him on the
00:22:26
back and he walked a bit faster then and then he he tripped over and and fell and he fell against the crate
00:22:33
there was a crate and the crate got broken and then he cut himself forensic criminal psychologist donna youngs
00:22:41
watched the police interview to see what hanagret's body language might reveal to
00:22:45
detectives what's striking here is the way in which she's talking about what's happened as if
00:22:52
she's talking one professional to another she's just giving the technical
00:22:56
details to as if she's giving a report to another professional so it was a bantering kind
00:23:01
of an interaction and i then i used the rolling pin that there's no emotion it's
00:23:06
a as far as she's concerned what she's done is is rational reasonable and she's just
00:23:11
giving a a professional account of it do you feel that hitting him over the head with a rolling
00:23:17
pin with a hairbrush using your hands and fists and this is this is incredible she's she
00:23:24
doesn't flinch when she's asked about about hitting him on the head with a
00:23:27
rolling a rolling pin doesn't flinch just just maintains this very neutral expression we get a glimpse i
00:23:36
think of the way in which she conducted herself within within her household this sort of
00:23:42
unquestioning authority and she's trying to carry that through here to this stressful situation
00:23:48
she was very open she fully admitted that you know she often should punch him she admitted hitting him with uh with a
00:23:53
rolling pin she admitted pushing him down the stairs her explanation for this was that her
00:23:59
husband would go into a trance and this was her trying to snap him out of a chance
00:24:06
unbelievable to see and to see her speaking about this in such matter of fact tones
00:24:10
and it it took me back a little bit to their level of religiosity was that this was almost like casting out demons it
00:24:18
seemed to be that's where she was coming from these times that you've hit him
00:24:23
um they weren't a result of him being violent to you no or was he being aggressive towards you as the
00:24:35
interview carries on i think we see that it's actually starting to become a bit
00:24:38
of a struggle for her um the word the words remain not defensive but the body language starts to to sit
00:24:48
in contrast to the words that are coming out of her mouth so actually we start to
00:24:52
see a body language that is much more defensive so she starts to cower the shoulders are slumping and
00:25:00
she's leaning forward she starts to look like your typical suspect rather than a woman
00:25:06
in charge as she starts talking about what happened we see her use over-gesticulating
00:25:15
we see her over-gesticulating this is someone who's starting whatever she's
00:25:20
saying who's starting to feel a little bit uncomfortable a little bit threatened
00:25:25
to donna young's hannah shows clear signs of a psychological abuser and declare macintosh too a former
00:25:32
policewoman it's possible to divide hannahgret's behavior into two different types of
00:25:38
abuse so on the one hand there was very strong evidence of systemic physical abuse beatings with blunt objects uh
00:25:48
punching jabbing in in christopher's throat but on the other hand there was what would now be termed as coercive
00:25:56
control um and and legislation that's come in very recently means that coercive control is being taken very
00:26:02
seriously now by the justice system and so that type of control was down to hanagret's desire for
00:26:11
knowledge of everything that christopher was doing where he was going what he was
00:26:15
thinking withholding trips to the toilet withholding medical treatment complete control of somebody else's life what was
00:26:23
interesting in her interview is when she was asked about how she saw her role within the family the way she spoke
00:26:29
about it was quite significant and she said that she didn't like to feel that
00:26:33
anyone was hiding anything from her that she wanted to know what was going on at
00:26:38
all times and it seemed like she was incredibly controlling of her husband and of her family as a whole what would
00:26:45
you say your role is i don't know i'd like to know what's going on donnelly remained resolute throughout
00:26:57
her interview she denied murder a relatively slight woman a mother not the typical profile of an abuser
00:27:07
but in the united kingdom more than two and a half million adults experience domestic violence each year
00:27:13
abusers come in all shapes and sizes tragically abuse in a domestic setting is all too
00:27:21
common usually it is a man who is abusing a woman who is grinding her down making her
00:27:30
believe that she is not good enough making her believe that she has to be reliant on him
00:27:36
and that is the way in many respects that society has tended to see men but of course there are situations where
00:27:44
the tables are turned they are more unusual not least because a woman is less likely to be physically more
00:27:53
powerful than a man but if you take a woman who is particularly big and strong or a man who
00:27:59
is particularly small and weak compared to other men or both or if you take a man who has deep
00:28:05
religious beliefs and does not believe in fighting back believes very strongly that you should never hit a woman and a
00:28:11
woman who has absolutely no compunction about hitting a man then it is entirely possible that you
00:28:17
set up a scenario where the woman becomes the abuser women abusing men is not uncommon
00:28:26
just under 800 000 men were victims of domestic violence in the uk last year it's dreadful
00:28:34
for a woman who was abused to feel she's hopeless to feel she's helpless to feel
00:28:39
she's completely worthless but as a man who comes from a very traditional background where perhaps he
00:28:48
was brought up to believe that the man should be the breadwinner the man of the house to find himself gradually ground
00:28:57
down to the stage where he is completely reliant on her and does not even feel able to escape the abuse
00:29:07
the impact on his self-esteem on his morale on his mental well-being must have been devastating
00:29:19
alex skeel was trapped in a long-term abusive relationship he was only saved when police intervened and his wife and
00:29:26
mother of his two children was jailed she would say oh i deserved it and say things like that which is really common
00:29:35
and it would be the same for christopher it would be the same for thousands of men that are going through this probably
00:29:40
now as i speak they just always say well you deserve it it's your fault it always puts the blame
00:29:46
onto them she doesn't see her victim as fully human so that actually they're not
00:29:52
that relevant to her as an individual in any kind of emotional sense there's
00:29:56
always the same cycle with these things the first incident occurs they say sorry then it happens again and
00:30:03
they sort of fantasize about it and then it happens and then the cycle begins and
00:30:09
it's until someone externally breaks that cycle nothing's going to change it'll just
00:30:15
keep going and going and going and that's what happened with me and it most likely was the same for christopher
00:30:20
as well like the vast majority of cases of domestic violence the abuse meted out
00:30:27
onto christopher over years took place behind closed doors without any independent witnesses it's just so
00:30:34
lonely and dark and you don't have anyone to talk to i could imagine there was probably no
00:30:40
conversations that went on between them other than arguments it's the way it is and it's just
00:30:47
a really horrible way to live and it was the daily existence of christopher donnelly
00:30:55
i know how he was feeling at that time i knew that my body was shutting down and
00:31:00
i was waiting to die i just thought well the next time i get stabbed the next time i get hit it's
00:31:07
going to be in the wrong place or the knife is going to go a little bit deeper or going the wrong way
00:31:12
and eventually i just my body will shut down wife on husband abuse may appear to get
00:31:21
little publicity but oxford detectives felt they had a chilling example of it on their hands
00:31:27
in march 2019 would they secure a murder conviction against hannahgret donnelly her defense in court i
00:31:35
think was quite clearly that the assault she carried out which he fully admitted
00:31:39
carrying out were not the resultant cause of his death [Music] and that he died of an illness
00:31:52
police had hannah grete donnelly in custody but prosecutions for murder are seldom straightforward
00:31:58
investigators needed to prove that there was a direct link from the pneumonia that had killed christopher and the
00:32:04
violence that he had suffered at the hands of his wife and what lawyers call men's reya in layman's terms that she
00:32:11
had meant to hurt her husband that the former midwife mother of his four children had known
00:32:16
what she was doing over the years of apparent systemic abuse an interview in a murder case such as
00:32:22
this will be there'll be a formal strategy which will be agreed with the senior investigating officer
00:32:28
and the strategy would have been these are what we need to work we need to find out
00:32:33
what's going on we need to get her talking that didn't seem to be a problem
00:32:37
she seemed eager to talk to prove murder they need to prove that she caused really serious harm to him and she
00:32:43
intended to cause really serious harm to him other evidence available to the prosecution was the initial reason they
00:32:49
had suspected hannahgret of murder the delay in the time that she had taken to call the police after she claimed she
00:32:56
had found her husband inexplicably dead leaving somebody that at some point you have presumably loved regardless of
00:33:05
what's happened in your relationship to die on their own on a bathroom floor
00:33:11
and not to call the authorities until some 12 hours after life is extinct indicates a lack of any moral fiber a
00:33:22
lack of any compassion it is not a normal response to somebody's death and it's one of the most chilling things
00:33:30
about this woman a jury would hear her maintain that any violence to christopher had been for his
00:33:37
own sake it's it's more like this helping him to come out of some sort of
00:33:50
peculiar trans translation no i can't say it's a trance but it's sort of peculiar
00:33:56
i have read some reports where hannahgre suggested that christopher almost invited these
00:34:03
beatings well i struggle to think of anybody who would like a whack over the head
00:34:09
with a rolling pin i also struggle to think that a relationship that plumbed the depths
00:34:16
that this did was ever a relationship built on equality it was according to hanagret the
00:34:25
victim's fault a suggestion faced by another man who'd suffered at the hands
00:34:29
of his wife i don't know if they just get into like some fantasy i don't really know but
00:34:37
for them to keep doing that they've got to kind of take out their head what they're
00:34:41
actually doing is wrong and they've got to try and somehow reason for what they're doing
00:34:47
the case put to a jury centered on the causes of the pneumonia which led to the death of christopher donnelly broncon
00:34:53
pneumonia can cause a wide variety of symptoms but of course it can have an impact on your mental state because if
00:35:00
you're lacking oxygen to the brain and if you have germs flooding around your
00:35:05
body you can feel light-headed you can feel dizzy you can feel confused and it's entirely possible that your
00:35:12
level of consciousness would drop so that you would enter what his wife described as a quote
00:35:19
trance-like state no normal wife would dream of dealing with that by hitting him with the rolling pin to
00:35:29
knock it out of him but would the jury accept that his susceptibility to pneumonia was caused
00:35:34
by his physical condition he had a cauliflower ear she had at some point either hit him across the throat
00:35:41
or perhaps tried to strangle him because he had damage there to his voice box there's no question that by the end this
00:35:49
was a totally callous woman who systematically over months and years physically really dreadfully physically
00:36:00
abused her husband until as the police said he was so weakened that he effectively succumbed to his injuries
00:36:08
from a complication although christopher was only 55 when he died a neighbor described him in court
00:36:15
as looking more like an 80 year old man so it's clear that the effect of hannahgratt's behavior was having a
00:36:22
profound impact on him it's it's almost as though the weaker he got the stronger hannahgret got as
00:36:29
though she was almost feeding on his weakness and by the time he died there was no doubt about it she had complete
00:36:36
control over that family particularly her husband found dead at the foot of the stairs in their family
00:36:43
home she said because he had tripped if you're on the landing and you've obviously had to reach
00:36:51
to push him does that mean he's fallen down the hole pretty much the whole flight of stairs
00:36:55
no no as i said he he walked a bit faster then sort of pushed him on the back and he walked a bit faster than and
00:37:03
then he he tripped over and and fell and she fell against the crate there was a crate and
00:37:10
the crate got broken and then he cut himself in the head after years of building up that control
00:37:18
of creating a fortress in which he was queen would it be hannahgret's own words
00:37:23
that would eventually damn her the jury were offered a complete picture of hannah grete donnelly
00:37:29
anna gret had clearly lost touch with any shred of common decency she would beat christopher
00:37:36
if he didn't answer a question quickly enough she terrified him and she ran that house
00:37:44
through fear and intimidation this is a woman who clearly had absolutely no concept of right and
00:37:53
wrong this is a woman who clearly believed that it was perfectly acceptable for her to beat her husband
00:37:59
regularly and systematically she beat him to control him she beat him to stop being irritating
00:38:05
when the being irritating actually was him dying in front of her that is the sort of woman she was
00:38:13
the trial of hannah grete donnelly took 13 days after weighing up the evidence the jury reached the verdict hannah
00:38:19
grete donnelly was guilty of the murder of her husband she was found unanimously guilty by the
00:38:27
jury on the 20th of march 2019 and sentenced a life imprisonment with a minimum term of 16 years
00:38:37
they didn't take very long to decide at all in this case which must have been
00:38:42
truly shocking to have heard not least for the family who had to hear all the evidence of abuse that she'd
00:38:50
given to christopher over the years the judge did say that there was clearly evidence of happier times but he was
00:38:58
appalled by the behaviour by her controlling behavior and by the severity and the longevity of the abuse that she
00:39:07
had committed i would categorize hernigrette as a victim as object murderer these murderers see see their
00:39:15
victims not as fully human but as objects objects upon whom they can enact it can carry out any form of violent
00:39:23
control and power the judge spoke of the horror at what she'd heard throughout the trial it was
00:39:30
clear she said that christopher experienced real physical suffering for a long period before his death it was
00:39:36
inconceivable that he didn't also suffer mentally hannahgret donnelly was pathologically
00:39:43
controlling and that desire for control resulted in the most horrific abuse i've
00:39:49
ever heard of did he cower away from you was he scared of you it might be easy to assume that the the most
00:39:57
shocking element of this case is that the offender is a woman we're perhaps very used to domestic violence being
00:40:04
committed by men but men are victims of domestic violence far too often and what this case shows is that this is
00:40:13
a very real problem that that needs to be addressed regardless of the the genders of the people involved
00:40:19
what shocked me the most was just how vulnerable christopher was and the fact that nobody noticed that here
00:40:27
was a family with children who were living on a very ordinary estate in a very ordinary town and yet
00:40:35
somehow they went under the radar and that's a truly shocking thing in today's society
00:40:42
why did christopher donnelly not fight back we have to bear in mind that even though we are moving on in this
00:40:50
direction we still live in a society where it's more difficult for a man to come forward and say that he is being
00:40:56
abused in the home halagreat and christopher could have had the perfect life together the perfect
00:41:01
marriage the perfect family instead for years away from prying eyes hannahgret donnelly waged a war against
00:41:08
her husband a war he could not survive [Music] i've met lots of criminals over the
00:41:19
course of my police career and i've researched even more as a result of my crime writing years
00:41:27
i don't think i've ever come across such a terrifying figure as hannah donnelly
00:41:33
the lack of compassion and the extent of her of her abuse is is truly horrific and arguably if i wrote a character that
00:41:41
bad i'm not sure anyone would believe that she could exist [Music] you