Murder trial Dudley man went on a "mission of vengeance" (From Dudley News)

Murder trial Dudley man went on a "mission of vengeance"

9:00am Thursday 5th November 2009

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A DUDLEY man whose wife left him on their wedding night went out on a "mission of vengeance" that left the woman he loved fighting for life and her new boyfriend dead from stab wounds.

David Slater, of Sudeley Gardens, Milking Bank, argued with his wife Alison just hours after they had said "I do" and she left to start a relationship with her friend Kenneth Westwood.

Wolverhampton Crown Court heard how Slater took it very badly, but it was two weeks before he learned where the couple were living, and he then went "ballistic," alleged David Williams QC prosecuting.

He told the court the 56-year-old went out in a rage armed with a large kitchen knife after telling a friend he was going to "kill them both."

Slater went to the house in Monument Lane, Sedgley, where he brutally stabbed 50-year-old Kenneth Westwood to death.

He also stabbed his wife several times and it was "only through luck that she remained alive."

"He did exactly what he intended to do," claimed Mr Williams. "It may have been out of character,on the spur of the moment or in a fit of rage. But this was murder and Mr Westwood was deliberately killed by him."

Slater has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Westwood and also to attempting to murder his 51-year-old wife.

Mr Williams told the jury Slater and his wife had an "on-off relationship" for more than two years and, on August 2 last year, they married.

But the marriage was "very short lived," he added, because it ended after an argument that night and she began her relationship with Mr Westwood who lived nearby.

Slater did not know immediately she was seeing someone else but his wife contacted the friend he was living with and she told him what had happened.

She said her marriage was over and that she was now living with Mr Westwood and the friend later put Slater in the picture, said Mr Williams.

He said the defence would be flagging up a case of self defence, provocation or diminished responsibility but stressed, "Slater went out on a mission of vengeance intending to kill."

The trial, expected to last for ten days, is continuing.

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