Left: Daryl Berman. Right: David Berman (Facebook/Manchester Evening News).
A 71-year-old woman is on trial in the UK for allegedly murdering her 84-year-old husband with a kitchen knife she claims he "slipped" onto, with local reports detailing how she admitted to writing "bye bye" in a calendar — the same day he died — just hours later.
"It has got 'bye bye' and it has got two kisses, and it has got a heart," Daryl Berman testified on Monday, according to the Manchester Evening News. "I put it on at the end of the day when everybody had gone and I was ready to go up to bed."
The March stabbing death of David Berman, Daryl Berman's husband, was initially ruled an accident before an investigation allegedly revealed his wife's alleged involvement. As a result, police left David's body in the couple's home and ordered an undertaker to come get it.
Daryl Berman described in court how she lay down with David Berman "at least four times" while waiting for his body to be removed, the Evening News reports.
"I lay down next to David," she reportedly testified, crying. "I kissed him and I stroked his arm. I did it quite a few times."
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Daryl Berman, who is charged with murder, allegedly told police in interviews that she was eating a chicken salad sandwich on March 13 and had a knife with her on a food tray when David Berman came in and offered to take the tray into the kitchen for her as she was finishing up. Daryl Berman said that as her husband went into the kitchen, she heard "what sounded like a stumble or a fall" before finding David Berman on the ground, face down, with the knife in his chest near his right armpit.
"It was like a stumble or a slip," Daryl Berman recalled in court. "Then I heard another noise. It was like a groan. I jumped up and screamed and ran in," she said.
Daryl Berman claims she found David Berman lying face down, making a "gurgling" sound, after the alleged fall. There was "tons of blood" on the ground, according to her statements to police, which she allegedly didn't notice at first, the Evening News reports.
"I sort of looked down, moved his head a bit, and I thought 'what on earth is all this gravy? We don't have gravy,'" Daryl Berman allegedly recalled during one of her police interviews. "It was the amount of blood. I've never seen anything like it in my life. I got the shock of my life because I didn't know where it was coming from."
The septuagenarian said she called police after finding David Berman, with a dispatcher talking her through performing "compressions" on him and asking where he was bleeding from.
"I said, 'I haven't got the foggiest,'" Daryl Berman allegedly recounted to police.
Asked in court Monday whether she killed her husband, Daryl Berman said, "Absolutely not," according to the Evening News.
A local medical examiner who performed David Berman's autopsy took the stand last week and said Daryl Berman's story about her husband falling onto the knife was "inconceivable," given the combination of the stab wound and a "defensive injury" that was found on one of his fingers.
"I think in broad terms, looking at the general population, accidental stab wounds with knives are exceedingly rare," Dr. Philip Lumb said. "I personally have not come across one."
Police have never revealed a motive for David Berman's alleged murder. Daryl Berman's trial is scheduled to continue this week.