Wirral private-hire driver is jailed for murder of wife A WIRRAL man who repeatedly stabbed his estranged wife in front of their distraught young son has been jailed for life.
The nine-year-old boy desperately got between the couple during the horrific incident and pleaded with Steven Cleary to "stop hurting mummy".
But he continued with the attack, also witnessed by the boy's friend, and stabbed Anne Marie Cleary six or seven times on the pathway of their matrimonial home in Oarside Road, Wallasey on the afternoon of Saturday August 13 last year.
The devoted mother-of-two never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead at Arrowe Park Hospital an hour later.
Cleary was jailed for life with a minimum term of 15 years this afternoon.
He had been due to stand trial at Liverpool Crown Court yesterday but at the last minute changed his plea to guilty to murder.
The court heard the violence had begun in the kitchen of their matrimonial home.
It was later found that Cleary had begun by stabbing Anne Marie there and used a total of three knives.
Mrs Cleary had desperately tried to ward off blows with her hands and neighbours and a passing motorist, who stopped to intervene, saw him apparently repeatedly punching her on the pathway while she was screaming and shouting.
Graham Reeds QC, prosecuting, said: "The attack finished when the defendant just stopped and apparently calmly walked away.
"When paramedics arrived there was little they could do to save Anne Marie."
Until six weeks before the murder the couple, who had been married for nearly 25 years, had lived together as a family.
Times had become financially difficult for Cleary, a private hire taxi driver.
He also told his wife about his secret drug taking, and she was resentful about the money he had been spending on his habit.
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His son and daughter, now 12, spoke of Cleary being violent to their mum and the daughter said "they were always arguing and fighting" and she had seen bruises on her.
He had wrongly thought Anne Marie had been having an affair and pushed her onto a settee, during which their son thought he was throttling her, said Mr Reeds.
Cleary, who was by then on anti-depressants, moved out after a row in which he hit her and threatened to kill himself but called round to see the children.
On the day of the tragedy he went round to finish a DIY job as requested arriving shortly after 12.30pm.
Shortly before 2pm Anne Marie collapsed on the front path of the house and lay dying.
Shortly before their son, accompanied by his friend, had knocked as he did not have a key but his father told him to return in ten minutes.
Mr Reeds said: "He realised something was wrong and stayed where he was.
"The next thing he and his friend saw Anne Marie staggering out of the door covered in blood. She was shouting to call the police.
"The defendant, who had left the kitchen by the back door, rushed round to the front of the house carrying a large knife and confronted her on the path".
Police found a bread knife and a broken knife in the kitchen and a further knife in the porch and they all bore traces of the victim's blood.
Cleary was arrested that evening in a local park having cut his wrists with a broken bottle and also had superficial self-inflicted wounds to his neck and stomach.
He claimed he had tried to kill himself in the kitchen and his wife's injuries were caused accidentally when she tried to disarm him.
Jailing him the Recorder of Liverpool, Judge Clement Goldstone, QC, said it was not clear what had caused the marital separation but by the time of the killing he was suffering from mild to moderate clinical depression.
He said: "I am satisfied that when you attacked your wife with such horrific consequences you intended, though you soon regretted it, to kill her and you had no thought whatsoever for the well-being of your children who by your conduct you have not only deprived of a loving mother but also in reality a father who had much to offer them."
He said that their maternal grandmother is now bringing them up, adding: "It is a mercy she has a spirited and unquenchable desire to discharge that responsibility as a tribute to the memory of her daughter who was such an outstanding mother."
Judge Goldstone said he accepted Cleary's remorse is "both total and genuine" and that the attack was not premeditated.
"I accept at the time you killed your wife you were depressed, had you not been so you would not have behaved in the way in which you did," he added.
Richard Pratt, QC, defending, said that Cleary, of Shakespeare Road, Wallasey, was of effective good character, not having been in trouble since he was 19.
The court heard he had been fined for offences including inflicting grievous bodily harm.
He said that numerous references "speak with one voice of a man much valued by them, a caring man and a man for whom they could find no explanation as to why he behaved in the way he did."
He said that Cleary's brain had "shut down" and he has only sporadic and fragmented memories of what happened.
"What happened that day was not his wish. He did not wish her to be dead and he grieves her passing."
Mr Pratt said that he did however accept that "in that moment of madness he was hellbent on causing at least serious harm."
He continued, "Quite what happened to turn him over the edge remains a complete mystery.
"His behaviour had more than a measure of irrationality in that he pursued the attack here it could be seen by members of the public and he walked away as oblivious to the carnage he was leaving behind."
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