A daughter begged her father not to kill himself moments after he ended the life of her cancer-stricken mother, a Cyprus court said on Wednesday.
Judge Michalis Drussiotis, who was ruling on the first euthanasia case in Cyprus, sat in silence as the harrowing video was played before Paphos District Court. This happened after the testimony of David Hunter, the Briton accused of premeditated murder of his wife Janice.
“Daddy, daddy, just concentrate on me. Just focus on me,’ Lesley Cawthorne was heard saying in a conversation filmed by a family member at her home in Norwich, shortly after Interpol was alerted. “Forget about everyone else, just concentrate on me. Daddy, you love me. Not anyone else, just me and you. I love you. I’m your girl, I’ll always love you. I’m your girl daddy. I’m your little girl, focus on me. You can’t leave… daddy don’t leave me.
Hunter, 75, admitted suffocating his wife to death – using his bare hands to block her airway – on the night of December 18, 2021, at their home outside Paphos, a seaside town popular with British retirees. He says he only did so after Janice, 76, began pleading with him weeks earlier to end her life. She had terminal leukemia, a disease that also killed her older sister.
Almost immediately afterwards, the pensioner tried to take his own life, but not before making one last call: to his brother William, back in the UK, to inform him of what had happened.
When the police subsequently rushed to Cawthorne’s home, they insisted that she videotape every conversation with her father to use as evidence.
The video was shown at the request of the defense as evidence of Hunter’s psychological state on the night of the killing during a tense day of trial in district court. In one brief shot, he is seen staring blankly at the screen.
Hunter, a former miner from Northumberland, was forced to give a statement to police within hours of having his stomach pumped after a failed attempt to overdose on prescription pills and alcohol. His legal team ruled the testimony inadmissible, saying it should be thrown out.
Hunter, who could spend the rest of his life behind bars, previously described the moments after his wife’s death as “like being in a dream”.
Testifying for the first time since the trial began almost a year ago, he repeatedly said he could not remember the events immediately before or after Janice died in his arms. “I was a blur and it looked like I was being looked down upon,” he told the three-judge tribunal.
The courtroom fell silent again as state prosecutor Andreas Hajikiru showed Hunter Exhibit 31 – a collection of photographs taken by police at the crime scene – which left the Briton breaking down as he recalled the events. The photos include an image of his wife’s lifeless body slumped in a white leather armchair.
“It was the first time I saw 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 held for the past 12 months.
The couple, who settled in Cyprus for a ‘dream life’ abroad, met as teenagers and have been together for 56 years.
But during cross-examination, the prosecutor claimed Janice resisted, saying she had scratches on her face. The pensioner countered that this was impossible as his wife was so weak she could barely move her limbs and “I had no scratches on my arms”.
Euthanasia is outlawed in Cyprus and the case highlighted the predominantly Greek Orthodox nation’s staunch opposition to assisted suicide.
The Mediterranean island’s attorney general, its top legal authority, intervened amid fears the highly sensitive affair could set a precedent, given the lack of a death certificate and the manner in which Janice died.
A plea deal, reached 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 evidence the pair were an existing suicide contract.
The trial continues, with defense witnesses re-appearing later this month.
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