Woman denies plotting to kill husband for life insurance in Swansea court
A woman has denied plotting with her lover to kill her husband, the court heard.
Michelle Mills and her boyfriend, Geraint Berry, both 46, are on trial accused of planning her husband Christopher’s killing to cash in on his £124,000 life insurance.
Mills said she had ‘never talked about’ her husband’s life insurance, though the court was told she managed all the couple’s finances during the marriage.
Prosecutors say Mills and Berry began planning the killing within weeks of Christopher’s Help For Heroes policy starting, with Mills named as the sole beneficiary.
Swansea Crown Court heard the pair exchanged 2,301 messages over their three-month affair, some of which explored methods of killing her husband.
Berry and another ex-soldier, Steven Thomas, 47, are said to have stormed the couple’s caravan in Cenarth, Carmarthenshire, in September last year, carrying imitation firearms.
Mills insisted there was no real plan to kill Christopher, saying the conversations were mere ‘fantasy’.
The court was told Berry messaged Mills as he travelled to the caravan, then wrote: ‘We are here xxxx’ – and she responded: ‘Okay xxxx’.
Mills told jurors: ‘I believed it was all fantasy, that he wasn’t actually coming, and that he was just trying to reassure me and make me feel safe.’
The court heard that after the incident, Mills texted Berry urging him to flee and added: ‘Delete all communications on both phones.’
She said: ‘I genuinely expected him to reply, “What are you talking about? I’m not there. What’s happened?”’
Mills later wrote ‘Is one of you bleeding? Xxxxx’ before texting: ‘Chris didn’t recognise you or the other person. I won’t say a word.’
She told the court: ‘I kept hoping he would message back. By then he would have been asleep on his meds, and I hoped he’d wake up and say what are you on about.
‘I had a sinking feeling it might be Gaz.’
Mills said she never took her lover’s messages seriously and denied any intention to harm Christopher.
She said: ‘Gaz liked to talk and spin yarns. I didn’t always believe him. They were tall tales – very pie-in-the-sky fantasies. A lot of the time it was escapism.
‘It wasn’t serious and it took you out of the moment.’
Mills said she first thought the caravan attack might have been retaliation for her husband’s service in Afghanistan.
She told the court: ‘He used to say someone would come and shoot him one day if they ever found him, because of what he’d done to detainees during interrogations. He said it over and over again.’
Mills said she did not expect two masked men to burst into the caravan, despite Berry’s messages that he was on his way.
Berry, 46, of Clydach in the Swansea Valley, Thomas, 47, of Blaengwinfi in the Afan Valley, and Ethel Michelle Mills, of Llanelli, all plead not guilty to conspiracy to murder.
Mills also denies attempting to pervert the course of justice regarding deleted messages and her statements to police.
Berry and Thomas have already pleaded guilty to possessing an imitation firearm with intent to cause fear.
The three-week trial continues.
Politics Editor
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