A daughter begged her father not to kill himself moments after he had ended the life of her cancer-stricken mother, a Cypriot court heard on Wednesday.
Judge Michalis Droussiotis, adjudicating Cyprus’s first euthanasia case, sat in silence as the harrowing video footage was played before Paphos district court. It came after testimony by David Hunter, the Briton accused of the pre-meditated murder of his wife, Janice.
“Daddy, daddy, just concentrate on me. Just concentrate on me,” Lesley Cawthorne was heard saying in a call filmed by a family member in her Norwich home shortly after Interpol had been alerted. “Forget about everybody else, just concentrate on me. Daddy you love me. Not anybody else, just me and you. I love you. I’m your girl, I will always love you. I’m your girl daddy. I’m your little girl, concentrate on me. You cannot leave … Daddy don’t leave me.”
Hunter, 75, has admitted smothering his wife to death – using his bare hands to block her air passages – on the night of 18 December 2021 in their home outside Paphos, a coastal town popular with British retirees. He says he did so only after Janice, 76, allegedly began beseeching him weeks earlier to end her life. She had terminal leukaemia, a disease that had also killed her older sister.
Almost immediately after, the pensioner attempted to take his own life but not before making one last call: to his brother William, back in the UK, informing him of what had happened.
When police subsequently rushed to Cawthorne’s home they insisted she filmed any conversation with her father, to use as evidence.
The video was shown at the request of the defence as proof of Hunter’s psychological state on the night of the murder during an electrifying day of proceedings in the district court. In one brief shot, he is seen staring back blankly at the screen.
Hunter, a former miner from Northumberland, was made to give statements to police within hours of having his stomach pumped after a failed bid to overdose on prescription pills and alcohol. His legal team has labelled the testimonies inadmissible, saying they should be thrown out.
Hunter, who could spend the rest of his life behind bars, had earlier described the moments after his wife’s death as “like being in a dream”.
Giving testimony for the first time since the on-off trial began nearly a year ago, he repeatedly said he could not remember the events immediately before, or after, Janice died in his hands. “I was fuzzy and it looked like I was looking down on myself,” he told the three-member tribunal.
The courtroom again fell silent when the state prosecutor, Andreas Hadjikyrou, showed Hunter exhibit 31 – a collection of photographs taken by police at the crime scene – prompting the Briton to break down as he recalled the events. The pictures included an image of his wife’s lifeless body slumped in a white leather easy chair.
“It was the first time I had seen her face since then,” he told the Guardian as he waited to be escorted by police officers back to Nicosia central prison where he has been detained for the past 12 months.
The couple, who settled in Cyprus for a “dream life” abroad, met as teenagers and had been together for 56 years.
But during cross examination, the prosecutor argued Janice had put up resistance, saying there were scratches on her face. The pensioner countered that was impossible as his wife was so weak she was barely able to move her limbs and “I had no scratches on my hands”.
Euthanasia is prohibited by law in Cyprus and the case has highlighted the predominantly Greek Orthodox nation’s stiff opposition to assisted suicide.
The Mediterranean island’s attorney general, its top legal authority, has weighed in amid fears that the highly sensitive affair could set a precedent, given the lack of a suicide note and the manner in which Janice died.
A plea bargain struck after the two sides agreed on the facts of the case was overturned after the attorney general ruled it would be impossible to reduce the premeditated murder charge to manslaughter in the absence of proof that a suicide pact had existed between the couple.
The trial continues, with defence witnesses again taking the stand later this month.
