A British expatriate has confessed to killing his partner at their home in an Italian hilltop town, claiming that he lost his temper in reaction to her “obsessive jealousy”.
Michael Whitbread, 75, apologised for stabbing Michele Faiers to death in their home in the village of Verratti in the central Abruzzo region of Italy in October 2023.
He claimed that she had wrongly suspected him of having an affair with another expat woman.
She became obsessively jealous and subjected him to physical and verbal abuse, he told his trial in the town of Lanciano.
Whitbread told the court: “I wish I hadn’t done it and I apologise.”
He claimed that he had taken a knife from the kitchen and presented it to her, asking her to kill him. Instead, an argument erupted and he ended up killing her.
Whitbread and Faiers lived together in Verratti, an Italian village
His confession came on only the second day of the trial.
Faiers, 66, was found dead, lying on the bed that the couple shared, with seven knife wounds to her back. Her body was discovered by a friend.
Whitbread, meanwhile, fled the village, driving all the way across Europe to his daughter’s home in Shepshed, Leicestershire.
He was arrested by British police and extradited to Italy to face trial.
Faiers, a divorced mother of three, had moved to the hilltop hamlet of Verratti with Whitbread, a retired IT consultant, three years prior to her death.
After she suspected him of having an affair she subjected him to “daily verbal and physical oppression”, according to his lawyer, Massimiliano Sichetti.
Faiers was found with seven knife wounds to her back
Whitbread told the court that on one occasion, his partner had made him hold up a note that accused him of cheating on her with the other expat woman. She then allegedly photographed him with the note and sent the picture to one of her daughters.
Raffaele De Leonardis, a psychiatrist, testified that Whitbread had been suffering from acute mood swings and depression, exacerbated by heavy alcohol consumption.
The court heard that he had attempted suicide in March 2023.
After killing Faiers, he wrote to her three grown-up daughters to apologise.
Nadia Germanà Tascona, the daughters’ lawyer, said: “The important thing is to have had this admission of responsibility, not just from a judicial point of view but also from a personal and human point of view.”
The trial was adjourned until Feb 7.