A woman laughed and told her neighbour “I just stabbed him” when asked where her partner was, before he was later found dead.
A court heard how qualified teacher and mum-of-two Carrie McGuinness, 35, knifed her partner Steven Davies causing him a slow agonising death which took days.
Steven Davies rang a friend on June 10 2022 and said: "I'm dying”, before Googling “vomiting blood” and searching for an online diagnosis for “swollen bellies in men”.
Cardiff Crown Court heard on Friday that it wasn’t until five days later, on June 15, that police were called after a friend saw Mr Davies' body through a bedroom window, Wales Online reports.
“A friend of Steven Davies named Gareth Dale called the police reporting that he had gone to Davies’ ground-floor flat at 192 Garth Avenue, Glyncoch, concerned as he had not had contact with him for some days,” prosecutor Jonathan Rees KC told the court.
“Mr Dale looked through the window of his flat to his see his friend naked and face-down on his bed. Mr Dale thought that his friend was dead.”
Officers found Mr Davies hunched over kneeling on the bed. “On a bedside table next to the bed were two plastic bowls that contained a dark red, almost black, liquid. Mr Davies was cold to the touch and his face appeared green,” Mr Rees said.
A scenes of crime officer later discovered a stab wound to the left side of the body but there were no signs of disturbance.
A later postmortem found the stab wound had punctured Mr Davies' bowel causing the contents to enter his abdominal cavity causing widespread faeculent peritonitis.
The pathologist concluded the wound had been caused at least 36 to 48 hours prior to Mr Davies’ death. The cause of death was given as a stab wound to the abdomen associated with the puncture of the descending colon and peritonitis. It was estimated there could have been a period of several days between Mr Davies’ death and the discovery of his body.
Divorced mother-of-two McGuinness, was arrested on December 6 on suspicion of Mr Davies' murder. She pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter.
The court heard that during police interviews McGuinness described how the pair had a violent relationship and on June 9, a neighbour called Nathan Fletcher saw the injuries on her face following a violent altercation the previous day. She told officers Mr Davies had grabbed her hair and hit her face into the living room wall causing an injury to the bridge of her nose and a cut under her left eye.
Neighbours and friends of both the defendant and victim were spoken to by police who described their relationship as “turbulent and volatile”. McGuinness' neighbour Mr Fletcher saw also saw the defendant on June 10 walking back from the shop with a bag of alcohol. He saw she had a black eye and a cut across the bridge of her nose. She told Mr Fletcher: “He beat me up.” When asked where Mr Davies was McGuinness laughed and replied: “He’s in the house. I just stabbed him.”
Another neighbour, Darren Griffiths, heard McGuinness crying on June 9 and looked out the window and her in the garden with a glass of vodka. He heard her saying: “I think I’ve killed him. What have I done?”
On June 10 Steven Davies was seen getting on a bus at 7.30am from Rhydyfelin to Garth Avenue. He later spoke to friend Simon Beazer on the phone at 10.47am. He described Mr Davies sounding unwell and said he told him: “I’m dying.”
That was the last time they would speak and Mr Beazer tried to contact Mr Davies again on June 12, 13, and 14 without success.
At 5.29am on June 10 Mr Davies had used his phone to make an internet search for “Dianose swollen bellies in men” (sic) and "Best thing for constipation”. CCTV showed Mr Davies leaving the bus at 7.57am, which was the last sighting of him.
Defence barrister Mr Rhodes said neither his client nor Mr Davies understood the seriousness of his injury and had tried to treat it in an “amateurish way”. He added the defendant found alcohol “irresistible” which affected her ability to exercise self-control and her mental function was impaired by that impulse.
Addressing the defendant in his sentencing remarks the judge said: “It’s clear alcohol is linked to difficulties in past relationships… You began a relationship with Mr Davies which was to cost him his life. The relationship between you was volatile and you used alcohol to cope with your difficulties. I accept there was physical and mental abuse on both sides, Mr Davies dependent on alcohol and sometimes violent.”
The judge said McGuinness accepted stabbing Mr Davies and intended to cause him serious injury but not death. He said: “Very sadly Mr Davies did not receive medical attention. You said: ‘What have I done?’ but not: 'What should I do?' The answer was to call a doctor immediately but you failed to do that or anything else to help him apart from dressing the wound."
Mr Justice Kerr sentenced McGuinness to 15 years and six months imprisonment with an extended three years on licence. She will serve two-thirds of the custodial sentence in custody before she can be considered for parole. The defendant was emotionless as the sentence was delivered and waved to someone in the public gallery as she walked to the cells.
