Husband of university lecturer doctor told his neighbour ‘I think I’ve killed my wife’ who was found stabbed to death on the kitchen floor, murder trial hears

A university lecturer told his neighbour ‘I think I’ve killed my wife’ as he stood in his hallway wearing a shirt ‘soaked in blood’, his murder trial heard….CONTINUE READING...CONTINUE READING

Ertan Ersoy, 51, is on trial for allegedly murdering his wife Dr Antonella Castelvedere, who was found stabbed to death on the kitchen floor at the couple’s home in Colchester, Essex, on June 1 last year.

His neighbour Tanja Munro allegedly witnessed the moments after Dr Castelvedere, 52, was stabbed. She told Chelmsford Crown Court yesterday that Ersoy appeared a ‘bit disorientated’ following the incident.

‘He told me, “I think I’ve killed my wife”,’ she told the jury, adding that he held his stomach and was ‘gesturing and looking towards the kitchen.’

Mrs Munro said the kitchen door was not fully open but that she could see ‘someone was lying on the floor’. She said Ersoy was ‘breathing like he was in pain’, ‘groaning’, and ‘was concerned about his wife’.

Ersoy denies murder. He has pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

Ertan Ersoy, 51, is on trial for allegedly murdering his wife Dr Antonella Castelvedere, (pictured) who was found stabbed to death on the kitchen floor at the couple’s home in Colchester, Essex, on June 1 last year

Mrs Munro told jurors yesterday that she was at home when she heard a male voice shouting.

She said she saw Ersoy in his hallway holding his stomach and that his shirt was ‘soaked in blood’.

‘He said ‘my wife, my wife’ and did say that a few times,’ she told the court.

Mrs Munro recalled that he was injured, but said the wounds to Ersoy’s stomach ‘weren’t gaping open, they were quite clean, there wasn’t blood pumping or gushing out’.

She said that she took a cushion to try to stem the bleeding before going into the kitchen where she saw Dr Castelvedere on the floor with a knife ‘close to her hand by her head’ and in a pool of blood.

‘It was behind her head and her shoulders,’ she said. ‘It was almost like a halo of blood behind her on the floor.’

She said she knelt beside Dr Castelvedere and tapped her face to try to rouse her. She said she tried to save her by performing CPR, and did not immediately notice a cut to her neck.

She said the top that Dr Castelvedere had been wearing appeared clean.

‘I was doing chest compressions and I started to hear sounds coming from her,’ Mrs Munro said. ‘At first I didn’t know where they were coming from but then I noticed they were coming from her throat area.’

She continued: ‘I couldn’t understand where all that blood was coming from as I couldn’t obviously see an injury or any kind of wound that was producing this blood.’

She said she stopped when she felt she ‘wasn’t able to do any more for Antonella’ and went and knelt beside Ersoy.

‘He asked “my wife?” as a question,’ she said. ‘I took that to mean “is my wife OK?”.

‘I just shook my head at that point. We didn’t speak about anything else.’

Pictured: Emergency services on the scene in June 2022

Mrs Munro agreed with Sarah Elliott KC, defending, that her witness statement said Ersoy had appeared a ‘bit disorientated’, and that he was not aggressive towards her and she did not feel threatened.

Christopher Paxton KC, prosecuting, said Ersoy stabbed Dr Castelvedere ‘many times, causing 15 areas of sharp force injury’ to her face, neck, upper chest and to both hands.

He said one of the stab wounds to Dr Castelvedere, on her neck, measured 15cm in length and was 7cm deep and ‘resulted in severe blood loss, cardiac arrest and her death’.

Dr Castelvedere was a lecturer at the University of Suffolk teaching an MA in English and creative writing.

The prosecutor said the defendant was taken to hospital and treated for ‘two shallow wounds to his stomach which he claimed she had caused’.

He said jurors ‘need to be cautious about any suggestion made by the defendant that Antonella caused those two shallow wounds’ and that there was ‘no independent evidence that she did….CONTINUE READING