A woman on trial for the murder of her partner James Crossley admitted to police that she stabbed him but said she ‘didn’t want him to die’.
Julie Ann McIlwaine also told police how they had been arguing off and on that day but as her victim lay sleeping “I was getting all these thoughts in my head. I didn’t know what was going on…I felt like a psychopath,” the Coleraine Crown Court jury heard.
“I didn’t want me and him to be together. I didn’t want to happen what happened,” the 33-year-old told police who suggested to her “something came over you?”
“I couldn’t stop, I just kept pushing it and pushing it. He said ‘Julie Ann help me’…I took the baby and ran out,” she told the detectives.
McIlwaine, from Hazel Close in the Lagmore area of west Belfast, is on trial accused of the murder of Mr Crossley on 2 March 2022.
The 38-year-old victim sustained fatal stab wounds at McIlwaine’s former home in Filbert Drive in Dunmurry.
The jury have heard, while there is broad agreement about how the victim was killed, they would have to decide whether the defendant had suffered a loss of control in the lead up to the fatal wounds being inflicted.
In her first police interview with police, McIlwaine outlined how they had began a relationship in January 2020 but things went downhill after a few weeks.
McIlwaine told police Mr Crossley had threatened her and her family; threatened that social services would take her children from her and further that at times, he had “followed through” on his threats of violence including “strangling me.”
The jury has heard that at the time of the fatal stabbing, Mr Crossley was on bail for an offence of domestic violence.
It also transpired that during their relationship there were repeat episodes of serious domestic violence, verbal abuse and what amounted to coercive control.
The jury heard how incidents included:
- Mr Crossley being arrested and put into custody by Spanish police when he choked McIlwaine in a Santa Ponsa hotel in August 2020;
- “Ramming” McIlwaine’s car off the road in a drunken rage causing £7,000 of damage;
- that McIlwaine and her children were living in a Women’s Aid refuge for six months in 2021 “to get away” from Crossley;
- Mr Crossley was subject to a restraining order having been convicted of domestic violence;
- That McIlwaine was left suffering from PTSD from the incident in October 2021 when Crossley punched and choked her.
The Spanish charges were dropped after McIlwaine discovered she was pregnant and withdrew her statement.
During her police interviews, McIlwaine claimed Mr Crossley had told her “our relationship couldn’t move forward if I didn’t drop them charges.”
With officers addressing what happened on the night of the stabbing, she claimed Mr Crossley gave her the “ultimatum” between him and her family.
McIlwaine told police that as her victim lay sleeping she paced up and down unsure what to do even contemplating taking her own life.
“I just wanted it all to stop,” she told police.
Police heard however that instead she ended up going downstairs and picking out the largest knife from the block before going back to the attic bedroom.
While she maintained to police she could not specify how or why “like a switch flipped,” the jury heard her describe to the jury how she moved the couple’s infant daughter away from Mr Crossley “I didn’t want her getting any blood on her.”
Sobbing at times during the series of interviews, McIlwaine told police “I just kept going and going…I think I just blacked out, I don’t even know.”