A JURY was yesterday urged to convict an accountant of stabbing his wife to death in a "brutal and furious" attack.
David Lilburn, 45, inflicted 86 stab wounds to his wife Ann, 43. The mother-of-three was knifed in the chest, head and limbs during the assault.
Her former husband does not deny carrying out the attack in Arniston Way, Paisley, but is claiming dim
inished responsibility because of serious mental illness.
This illness made Lilburn believe a "black shadow" was controlling him and sending him telepathic messages to kill his wife, the defence claims. It argues he had been failing to take medication for his condition and should be convicted of culpable homicide.
However, Derek Ogg, QC, prosecuting, in his closing speech at the High Court in Glasgow, urged the jurors to find the accused guilty of murder. "A faithful wife's life was taken in a most brutal and furious manner," he said.
The wounds were inflicted "with such force, he actually penetrated the breast bone and ribs and skull".
"Only death could have been imagined as the intention," Mr Ogg added.
He rubbished the defence argument that Lilburn's failure to take the medication was behind the attack. Mrs Lilburn's attempt to divorce her husband was the real reason he killed her, he said.
Lilburn had been having an affair with another woman and for his devout Catholic wife this proved the "final straw". The "black shadow" was simply an excuse for Lilburn's loss of temper when confronted by his wife's attempt to separate.
"It's rage, it's jealousy, it's being affronted, it's getting your own way, it's taking it out on somebody else," Mr Ogg said.
But Lilburn, who had a long history of mental illness, had fooled a succession of doctors and psychiatrists into believing he had forgotten to take his medicine, and this led him to carry out the attack. "He's manipulating the facts in such a way as to fool all these professionals," said Mr Ogg.
Through his cunning, Lilburn had put together "his latest get-out-of-jail free card".
He added: "It stops here, it stops in this court room."
But defence counsel Andrew Lamb, QC, in his closing speech, claimed it would have been out of character for Lilburn to kill his wife in a fit of rage.
The notion that he could lose his temper to such a degree "strays into rather remarkable realms", Mr Lamb said.
He focused on the accused's history of mental illness as the reason behind the killing.
"There's no doubt that he had a well-documented and recorded mental illness," Mr Lamb told the jury.
Lilburn was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder in 2000, and by 2003 this had been revised upwards to schizoaffective disorder.
The trial continues.
The full article contains 469 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
