The story of a husband calmly confessing to the murder of his wife of 45 years over the phone to a 999 operator.
Stephen was a former marine and UKIP councilor who also ran a pub with his wife. Described in the netflix show meet,marry,murder (Season 1 Episode 5) as a ‘macho man’. He was a staple of the local community and was popular around town. At home he was controlling and abusive towards wife Anne, often physically assaulting her. The emotional abuse was constant and is highlighted by one incident in which Stephen fired a shotgun repeatedly above Anne’s head in order to obtain more control over his wife. Obviously this is not normal behavior and would have had a profound effect on Anne. Throughout her life it is said Anne had a drinking problem and also spent time at rehab, it is easy to see why with such abuse happening at home. Despite these problems Anne and Stephen had three sons Gary, Stephen Jr and Chrisopher. Stephen Jr recalls his childhood as mostly happy but also stated ‘I remember quite a few bad incidents as a child’.
Moving forward to 2005 when Stephen and his son Gary were working at a bowling alley together. A woman named Anastasia aged 26 then began working at the bowling alley. Instantly Stephen had an obsession with the older woman however she was interested in Stephen’s son Gary. Eventually the two began dating and had children together, but this did not stop Stephen from wanting the woman. During this time Stephen photoshopped her head onto pornographic images in a sick attempt to satisfy his desires.
This wasn’t enough for Stephen and he began to make advances upon Anastasia which she later said ‘shocked’ her. Stephen originally attempted to talk her into bed using sympathy by stating he hasn’t had sex in 6 years and that she could help him. I mean just pausing on this, it's crazy to think a father can be saying such things to his son’s partner and mother to his grandchild. This clearly highlights the narcissist that Stephen was. When his attempts at sympathy didn’t work Stephen changed tactics and used photos of himself in his youth as a bodybuilder to try and impress Anastasia (pictured here). Somehow these tactics worked and in April of 2017 the pair started a physically intimate relationship. Anastasia later stated that Stephen was manipulative and took advantage of her vulnerabilities. Nevertheless the couple met regularly for sex and exchanged explicit texts with one another. These same texts would later become their undoing when Anne would unlock Stephen’s phone and find these texts to a contact named SBG. SBG stood for Stephen’s Beautiful Girlfriend. It was eventually revealed that Anastasia was the woman on the other end of these texts. Stephen Jr later stated ‘I knew something was going on from the start’.
The revelation of the affair tore the family apart and led to frequent vicious arguments between Anne and Stephen. Remarkably Gary and Anastasia remained together (pictured here) and have stated it made them stronger as a couple. The same cannot be said for Stephen and Anne as they continued to have heated and brutal arguments fueled by alcohol. During this time Anne would come to her colleagues and show them bruises which Stephen had left on her during these arguments. The arguments were mainly centered around the fact that Stephen couldn’t drop his obsession with Anastasia and would continue to call and attempt to meet up with her. Gary and Anastasia even changed phone numbers to try and escape his constant stalker-like behavior.
Eventually these arguments reached a head on December 30th 2017 after a rather tense and sour christmas. According to reports Stephen had brought Anne a rather cheap and underwhelming gift from Asda and had also thrown her christmas dinner in the bin. On December 30th they once again got into a heated and violent row however this time both Stephen and Anne had been drinking. It was later determined that Anne was over 2 and a half times the legal drink driving limit and Stephen was estimated to be at the same level. In a drunken argument Stephen strangled his wife using a choke hold he had learnt during his time in the armed forces. He left her for an hour before deciding to call police and playing out one of the most bizarre phone calls ever to 999.
Stephen was arrested at the scene. He claimed in court it had been in self defense as his wife had attacked him with a knife. This however was disproved by the fact that Stephen did not call emergency services for over an hour and also did not attempt in any way to revive his wife. A jury found him guilty and he was convicted to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 14 years.
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