Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

I'm David Wilson, Emeritus Professor of Criminology,

and for over 30 years, I've investigated

the phenomenon of murder

and what it is that might motivate someone to kill.

Every murder case is different.

But time and again, a deadly pattern emerges

of warning signs and red flags.

In this new series, I investigate some of the UK's

most harrowing murder cases to understand how and why

these terrible crimes occur.

This is Murder UK.

On a sunny March day, 55-year-old music teacher Christopher Donnelly

was reported dead at home.

Though his wife Hannegret suggested

the death was natural, police were instantly suspicious.

They knew this was no ordinary death,

and their initial inquiry focused entirely

on proving that a murder had taken place.

Detectives began questioning Hannegret Donnelly.

(Detective) Within your family, what would you say your role is?

Yeah, I don't know.

I like to know what's going on, so...

I like to be informed as to what is going on.

I don't like it when people talk behind my back.

(David Wilson) Over the coming weeks,

evidence would emerge suggesting something sinister

happened behind the closed doors of an ordinary home

on an ordinary street.

The first that the emergency services knew about

Christopher's death was when they received a call from Hannegret

using her neighbour's phone to say that

her husband had died the night before.

When they attended, they found Christopher

clearly dead on the bathroom floor

with a significant number of injuries.

(David) Hannegret called the emergency services

from her neighbour's phone because the Donnelly family,

Hannegret and Christopher, and their four children

had opted out of society, choosing not to own a phone.

She told the operator Christopher had died the night before,

claiming she'd tried to revive him.

Emergency services immediately noted the unusual delay.

The patient had reportedly died hours earlier.

The 999 operator questioned a little bit, saying,

"When did he die?" And she told him it was

12 hours ago and that she hadn't called in the interim

because they were coming to terms with his death.

Police and ambulance turned up at the same time.

(David) Hannegret's decision to wait 12 hours before calling

for help and also using a neighbour's phone

to do so isn't a sign of panic,

but a deliberate, calculated act.

That delay of 12 hours allows her to decide

what her story is going to be, clean up the crime scene,

calm down.

So from the very start, Hannegret is deliberately staging a narrative

that she would like the outside world to accept

about what happens to her husband.

Wounds over his head and face looked several days old.

They'd already scabbed over.

A paramedic also noted a significant admission.

Hannegret stated they'd had a falling out.

And when that happened, she hit Christopher with a rolling pin.

Damning evidence begins to emerge.

She admitted that she had assaulted him

at some point in the past, but he had just simply died.

(David) All in all, a series of highly abnormal events

seem to have taken place.

Leaving somebody that at some point you have presumably loved,

regardless of what's happened in your relationship,

to die on their own on a bathroom floor

and not to call the authorities until some 12 hours after

life is extinct indicates a lack of any moral fibre,

a lack of any compassion.

It is not a normal response to somebody's death,

and it's one of the most chilling things about this woman.

(David) Police bring the German-born Hannegret in

for further questioning.

She had admitted to assaulting Christopher in the past,

and was that what happened here?

He tripped over and... and...

and fell, and he fell against the crate.

There was a crate, and the crate got broken,

and then he cut himself on the head.

(David) Her answers were convoluted.

Police quickly suspected this was far from an accident.

The wounds to Christopher's head were clearly

not caused by falling on a crate.

When Christopher Donnelly's body

was examined,

78 external injuries were found

and internal injuries, which included

a fractured spine and a fractured neck.

Even a cursory examination of the body

would have clearly revealed evidence of domestic abuse.

(Neil Lancaster) There was a number of crucial findings

within the home, which actually did point towards this being

a long-running systemic abuse.

There was blood spatters found on the ceiling.

There was blood found on the walls and blood found on furniture,

which clearly indicated this isn't just somebody

who's got ill and died.

This is someone who's been violently assaulted

on a number of occasions.

(David) It's the forensic discovery of blood spatter on the ceilings

and on the wall that really give us evidence that what happens

to Christopher isn't a singular abusive attack,

but characterised by systematic abuse

over many months, many years.

And of course, what we tend to forget

is that whether you're a man or a woman,

you're more likely to be murdered in a domestic setting

than in an outdoor public space.

The home for Christopher was not a place of sanctuary.

It's the forensic evidence in particular that refutes

Hannegret's narrative that this was an accident,

that Christopher had simply fallen onto the crate.

Christopher's official cause of death

was listed as bronchial pneumonia, but police had to

determine if the death was accelerated by his wife's violence.

Was this a murder case?

When questioned, Hannegret Donnelly offered a bizarre justification.

Her husband had entered a trance,

and she had hit him with a rolling pin simply

to force him to snap out of it.

I did hit him a bit harder sometimes, and then...

but as I said, he never...

he... it wasn't that he sort of fell...

fell over and lost consciousness.

Hannegret claimed that frequently the abuse was due to some desire

to bring him out of what she called a trance,

that he would be in a state where he wasn't listening,

and she would want to revive him from that.

But what we know is that Christopher was a very,

very ill man by this point.

He was both physically and mentally weak.

One of the strangest features of this case

is the weaponization of Christopher's health.

Hannegret actually claims that she was beating Christopher

so as to sort of waken him out of his trance-like state,

whereas, in fact, his trance-like state is caused by the fact

that he is being beaten regularly by his wife.

The belief that somehow she can talk her way out

of what has happened to Christopher...

she thinks because she controlled that domestic sphere in the way

that she did that she can control all the spheres

outside the home in relation to explaining what might

have happened to her husband.

(David) The police interview tapes offer

a crucial window into the true nature of Hannegret Donnelly.

What I see here is somebody whose body language

is very much at odds with the words coming out of her mouth.

She's used to providing a believable,

rational, reasonable, almost professional

account of what happened.

(David) What was the real cause of Christopher Donnelly's death?

Bronchopneumonia, or years of beatings at the hands of his wife?

(David) The violence inflicted upon Christopher Donnelly

was dismissed by his wife Hannegret as nothing more

than banter between husband and wife.

It was more like so we had a chase around the kitchen table.

Also, it was more... yeah, sometimes just a... yeah.

(Detective) Sorry. What did you say?

Chase around the kitchen table in a more sort of light-hearted way.

(David) Her story is simply not adding up.

To charge Hannegret with murder,

detectives had to uncover the truth hidden inside

an ordinary home on the Berryfields estate.

The couple had been married for 23 years.

Christopher, a music teacher with a biochemistry degree,

was a talented musician.

Their life... a husband, wife, and four children...

was a routine dictated by the strong matriarchal influence

of Hannegret Donnelly.

Hannegret Donnelly in some respects is a bit of a mystery.

She and her family very much kept themselves to themselves.

(Clare Mackintosh) She trained as a midwife but in fact

hadn't worked since she'd had her children.

She'd been a stay-at-home mum and homeschooling them.

Her husband, Christopher, had a science background,

but he was a very talented musician.

He'd worked as a music teacher for a long time and performed as well.

He was around the same age, a year older than his wife.

They'd been married for 23 years.

So far, the Donnelly story seems normal.

But aspects of the household are starkly dissimilar

from the lives of their neighbours.

They were, incredibly, a religious family

with deeply-held beliefs.

They apparently had some type of view around there

being an "end of days existence."

They shunned modern technology.

What emerges is that the Donnelly family...

Hannegret, Christopher, and their four children...

had opted out of society,

with Hannegret at the heart of every decision.

Hannegret had gradually began to take more control

of things in their relationship.

(David) She had little interest in the world

beyond the confines of their four walls.

Such was their mistrust that they took

their children out of mainstream education

and schooled them at home.

All the reports are that they lived a very insular existence

and really didn't associate with neighbours

or anything particularly such as that.

I get the sense that Hannegret creates within the home

a kind of psychological fortress.

The home becomes her domain.

The children are homeschooled.

She cuts off technology to the house.

She controls the influences within the house itself.

And therefore, there's no contradictory voices.

Was this isolation part of a bigger picture?

Experts agree that isolation is a tried and trusted technique

that's utilised by abusers to gain greater power

over vulnerable victims.

(Sarah Jarvis) It is possible, of course, for families

to be very happy and self-sufficient...

to homeschool their own children, to avoid the evils

of the internet and modern technology.

But it also makes it much, much more difficult for any authorities

to keep an eye on what's going on and to raise concerns

if they see anything out of the ordinary.

(David) Christopher's life took a turn after his marriage.

Though it started well, police uncover

that he had become both physically weak and mentally frail

in recent years.

Her husband initially was a talented musician,

but quite clearly over time became more and more and more weak

and became a shadow of his former self.

By January 2018,

Christopher was effectively disabled and unable to walk.

His health simply dwindled over the years of his marriage,

likely due to the injuries he suffered at his wife's hands.

We know that Christopher stopped working as a music teacher

in 2015 due to ill health.

And we can only assume that some of that ill health

was as a result of Hannegret's treatment of him.

His mental health began to suffer.

And what's particularly distressing about this case

is the knowledge that Hannegret was abusing

her husband at the very time when he needed her support.

So gradually, Christopher became weaker,

not just physically but mentally,

until he wasn't able to defend himself at all.

(David) Detectives needed to know more

from this outwardly cooperative woman

who to many seemed like an unlikely abuser.

The pathologist said he had never seen a case

where so many injuries were inflicted.

That kind of says it all for Christopher, a 55-year-old man,

to have been subjected to such abuse,

which led to so much scar tissue

that even a Home Office pathologist was shocked.

There were a number of old injuries as well

that showed that Christopher's abuse had started

many years previously.

He had a cauliflower ear, which is more commonly associated

with rugby player injuries, and a fracture

to the cartilage in his voice box,

which was consistent with attempted strangulation.

These are not minor injuries. This is not a fit of pique.

This is systematic physical abuse using third-party objects,

not just using her fists.

(David) The critical question for detectives was simple.

Can a death from pneumonia be directly linked

to years of sustained beating?

There are different types of pneumonia, and some of them

strike much more quickly than others.

Some of them are very, very virulent.

Some of them can strike completely healthy people

and leave them almost at death's door within hours.

But others are only likely to strike

if somebody's physical condition has been so weakened

that that germ can invade more deeply.

It seems highly likely that Christopher

was in such a physically weakened state

that even his immune system was giving up.

(David) The pathologist's conclusion was that

Christopher didn't die from natural causes.

He didn't die from bronchial pneumonia.

Instead, he died because of the 78 injuries

that the pathologist was able to determine.

And therefore, in the eyes of the law,

that's where we can bring a murder charge.

The abuse of men by women is more common than many people think.

Alex Skeel, who was trapped in a long-term abusive relationship

until his former partner was gaoled,

considers the parallels with what happened to Christopher Donnelly.

You can't do anything right.

And I always think of it as if you offer to do the cooking,

you're the worst cook in the world.

Then if you don't offer to do the cooking,

it's, oh, well, you never cook.

So you're never ever right.

You're always wrong, and there's so many examples.

Like, you're always walking on eggshells, as they say.

And you're just so frightened of doing anything wrong.

And then it gets to the point where you...

almost try and avoid any triggers

that you know that will trigger her off.

You turn into just a robot, and that's... you just...

that's just your way of life, and you can't get out of it.

(David) In the vast majority of domestic abuse cases,

men are the perpetrators.

But as detectives consider a murder charge,

it's clear Hannegret Donnelly's case is far from usual.

It's possible to divide Hannegret's behaviour

into two different types of abuse.

So on the one hand, there was very strong evidence

of systemic physical abuse...

beatings with blunt objects, punching,

jabbing in Christopher's throat.

I suffered abuse for five years.

It started off with really small little things that happened.

And it was simple things like, oh, you can't wear those shoes.

I prefer these shoes.

Oh, you can't have your hair like that.

I don't like the top you're wearing.

I don't like the colour.

So that type of control was down to Hannegret's desire

for knowledge of everything that Christopher was doing,

where he was going, what he was thinking,

withholding trips to the toilet, withholding medical treatment,

complete control of somebody else's life.

What's unusual here is that that abuse does not

seem to be motivated, as we might expect,

by any kind of anger or hatred of her victim,

but rather by an unquestioning belief

in her own absolute authority.

(Sarah) This very much speaks to a woman who is a complete bully,

who is an abuser, and, relatively unusually,

a physical abuser of a man, but also a woman

who has no remorse and who believes that her enjoyment

of life, her satisfaction, and that avoiding any irritations

of her life are more important than anything else.

It may even be that she got perverse pleasure

out of tormenting her eventually completely powerless husband.

(David) 9 out of 10 murder perpetrators are men.

But that does mean there is a small group of women

who are prepared to use lethal violence,

and Hannegret is one of those people.

She was enjoying the control, the total control,

that she exercised over Christopher,

the way that she created this isolated environment

in which she could do as she pleased.

It's now believed that Christopher suffered over a decade of abuse.

Throughout that entire time, his physical condition meant

he was rendered effectively defenceless.

So with every subsequent act of violence

that she inflicted upon her husband, he was weakened.

And therefore, the next act of violence

became even more impactful, was even more powerful,

had an even more powerful effect.

She reduced him over time almost to the state of a wounded animal.

It was more like... so we had a chase around the kitchen table.

Also, it was more... yeah, sometimes just a... yeah.

(Detective) Sorry, what did you say?

Chase around the kitchen table in a more sort of light-hearted way.

(David) The picture detectives are forming

is a living hell for a man hidden in plain sight...

Christopher beaten, scolded, trapped.

Alex Skeel understands that feeling.

Yeah, you just don't want to leave because you fear that

possibly something could happen to the children.

She even threatened to kill me if I tried to leave.

But you're just stuck.

(David) The police were now uncovering the truly horrific

reality of life inside the Donnelly family home.

(David) Four children were part of the Donnelly family,

yet not one of them complained about their mother's

treatment of their father.

Given the circumstances, it's highly unlikely

that they would have been able to.

It doesn't surprise me that none of the children

came forward to the authorities.

It's clear that Hannegret ruled that family with a rod of iron.

And no doubt, anyone in that family... children,

as well as Christopher... were absolutely terrified of her.

(David) Because the family had no visitors and saw few people,

Christopher had no sense of hope.

His children were isolated from anyone who might help, too.

What shocked me the most was just how vulnerable Christopher was,

and the fact that nobody noticed that here was

a family with children who were living on a very ordinary estate,

in a very ordinary town, and yet somehow they went under the radar.

(David) The key to Hannegret's long-term abuse of Christopher

was, in fact, ensuring their children's silence.

You know, the children weren't able to talk about

what it was that they saw, the fact that their mother

was abusing their father.

The children's silence becomes also a means by which we have

to recognise that this was a very psychologically

controlling domestic environment.

And in that respect, the children are also victims.

This systematic, psychological controlled environment

creates almost a vacuum in which it's possible

to physically abuse Christopher

for year after year after year.

Hannegret Donnelly's power over Christopher was unquestionable.

The abuse was so frequent, it became the norm.

The relationship dynamic had shifted so completely

that Christopher was unable to function

without his wife's say-so.

What is clear here is that the level of control

and the level of abuse made this

an almost everyday occurrence, a level of abuse

that had simply become accepted.

It's just so lonely and dark.

And you don't have anyone to talk to.

I can imagine there was probably no conversations

that went on between them, other than arguments.

It's just the way it is, and it's really a horrible way to live.

I have read some reports where Hannegret suggested

that Christopher almost invited these beatings.

(tense music)

Well, I struggle to think that a relationship that plumbed

to the depths that this did was ever a relationship

that was ever built on equality.

(Donna Youngs) To me, it feels like somebody who was almost

brainwashed as a child, somebody who's come out

of some really kind of bizarre childhood upbringing

that has taught her to think in this way about human relationships

and about the need to maintain control.

That's what I would suspect with Hannegret.

(David) What we do know is that her power over Christopher

was absolute.

After the police arrested Hannegret, they seized her diary.

And among the entries in there was clear evidence of abuse,

not least the fact that Hannegret had refused to let her husband

go to the toilet.

And this withholding of a basic human need is particularly cruel.

It's not just controlling, but it's dehumanising.

And it's a particularly shocking part of this case.

(David) It now seems likely that Christopher Donnelly,

suffering from years of abuse,

actually thought he was the one in the wrong.

Blaming it upon yourself when you are a victim is quite common.

Most people that I've spoken to...

that's male, female, whatever gender, age, ethnicity...

I've had thousands of people message me...

they've all said the same thing.

I thought it was my fault, when in fact, it isn't at all.

They're just made to believe that.

And that's why it kind of makes it worse,

because I think for a lot of people,

you try and sort of...

please them more to make out that it isn't your...

because you just completely feel it is your fault.

And you're doing something wrong, so you try and change it.

But then it goes back to what I was saying about

cooking the food or not cooking the food.

It just goes back to that.

It's a vicious circle, and it just goes round and round and round.

And I think, yeah, you do feel as though it's your own fault.

But then part of you knows that it isn't.

(David) The problem facing detectives,

having amassed evidence of abuse and control, is proving the murder.

If Hannegret is a killer, how can they get her to confess?

To be honest, Hannegret's perfectly composed

during her police interviews.

She's calm.

She doesn't feel under pressure.

She's simply selling her narrative.

And that's because she's lived within an environment

in which her narrative, her word, was law.

Why wouldn't it be law in this environment, too?

An interview in a murder case such as this,

there will be a formal strategy which will be agreed

with the senior investigating officer.

First of all, I tried to sort this out with him

in sort of a bantering sort of way.

(Neil) The strategy would have been,

we need to find out what's going on.

We need to get her talking. That didn't seem to be a problem.

She seemed eager to talk.

And they would then be thinking, I mean, obviously to prove murder,

they need to prove that she caused really serious harm to him

and she intended to cause really serious harm to him.

That would then prove murder, bearing in mind he's dead,

if they can prove that she inflicted the injury upon him

that resulted in his death.

Bantering, sort of.

(David) During the police interviews,

it becomes quickly apparent that for a person like Hannegret,

violence is a perfectly acceptable tool to reinforce her dominance.

I did hit him a bit harder sometimes.

Hannegret Donnelly's police interviews are truly chilling.

I don't think I've ever heard a criminal talk

in such a dispassionate way about such a horrific crime.

As I said to the interviewer, it wasn't that he sort of

fell over and lost consciousness.

She dismisses her actions as banter and as normal behaviour

in a relationship and really shows no sign of compassion

or love for the man that she's killed.

It was more like we had a chase around

the kitchen table, or also it was more,

yeah, sometimes just a... yeah.

(Detective) Sorry, what did you say?

Chase around the kitchen table in a more sort of light-hearted way.

It was quite disturbing to watch.

She was incredibly calm, not visibly distressed,

and almost matter-of-fact.

And she actually described what had happened at the house

in almost a forensic level of detail.

She would almost talk about that there would be banter between them

while she was assaulting him.

It was an incredibly cavalier view of what was

a terrible, systemic level of violence towards her husband.

She came across as incredibly cold and detached

from what must have been an entirely horrific situation.

I'd like to know what's going on, so...

It sounds very much as if this woman was paranoid.

I would like to be informed as to what is going on.

I don't like when people talk behind my back.

She was absolutely determined to be in control at all times,

and she didn't like any secrets going on.

Now, that paranoia might have meant that she felt that people

were scheming behind her back.

Heaven knows they had reason to try and scheme and get away.

So it was all part of this idea of keeping control.

This was clearly a woman who was terrified of losing control.

I get upset when I feel that there's some sort of things

going on that... that I'm not told about.

That's why she had to keep her family near her.

She kept them under her thumb inside the home.

Now, that would mean that they wouldn't feel they had anywhere

they could go and speak freely, anywhere that they could

be themselves, and of course,

anybody that they could turn to for help.

I've met lots of criminals over the course of my police career,

and I've researched even more as a result of my crime-writing years.

I don't think I've ever come across such a terrifying figure

as Hannegret Donnelly.

The lack of compassion and the extent of her abuse

is truly horrific.

And arguably, if I wrote a character that bad,

I'm not sure anyone would believe that she could exist.

But then it did get...

(David) The primary challenge for detectives

was forcing a confession from Hannegret Donnelly.

As they applied pressure, could the truth emerge from how

she reacted to their questioning?

Does that mean he's fallen down the whole...

pretty much the whole flight of stairs?

No, no. As I said, he... he...

(Donna) It's an interesting, gradual evolution of recognition

that she just might have done something wrong.

He fell against a crate.

There was a crate, and the crate got broken,

and then he cut himself.

(David) As Hannegret Donnelly tries to explain away

her brutal treatment of Christopher,

even the rolling pin attack, what does her body language betray?

And how does it contradict her claims about his death?

First of all, I tried to sort things out with him in sort

of a bantering sort of way.

(David) Donnelly freely admits hitting Christopher.

I punched him on his nose severely,

because I was so angry with him.

But he didn't have such a big cut.

He had just a small cut.

(Detective) Do you feel that hitting him

over the head with a rolling pin, with a hairbrush,

using your hands and fists,

is a appropriate reaction to him

acting in that way, being in his strange moods?

It's more like just helping him to come out

of some sort of peculiar trance.

Just how uncomfortable she's starting to feel,

we can see in the way that she clenches her hands together,

as if trying to give herself some kind of reassurance.

(Detective) But if you're on the landing...

And there's the mystified shaking of the head.

(Detective) Does that mean he's falling down the whole... pretty

much the whole flight of stairs?

No, no. As I said, he walked...

(Detective) These times that you've hit him,

they weren't a result of him being violent to you?

No.

During the interviews, the detectives

tried to establish whether Hannegret felt she was

justified in doing what she did.

(loud boom)

She did not.

(Detective) Within your family, what would you say your role is?

Um...

Yeah, I don't know.

She pauses in annoyance.

She's annoyed at being asked this question.

She thinks it's none of the interviewer's business.

She has never had to explain herself within her household.

(Hannegret) I'd like to know what's going on, so...

Yeah.

I'd like to be informed as to what is going on.

I don't like... like it when people talk behind my back.

(David) I was quite intrigued by the interview footage taken

by the police that Hannegret never identifies

a family member by their name.

It's always kind of anonymized.

The environment doesn't include individuals.

It's just simply the family.

She likes to be informed about what's going on,

but no-one is ever mentioned.

No-one ever gets an identity.

They lack identity in her language, because

she hasn't given them an identity.

They merely are extensions of herself.

I get upset when I feel that there's some sort of

things going on that... that I'm not told about.

There's no indication in her face, her expression, her body

language, that she's aware that what she's saying is in any way

potentially offensive.

It's... it's more like this...

Helping him to come out of some sort of peculiar trance.

No, I can't say it's a trance, but it's a sort of peculiar,

yeah, feeling, feeling strangely.

I don't know.

This is very interesting, where, for a moment,

she gives up for just a moment.

She's exhausted by the questions.

This is the first flicker of recognition to herself

that she's guilty but also that she maybe

be being seen as guilty by the interviewer,

that she may have lost her hold on control.

(David) The use of the word "trance"

by Donnelly may have some element of truth behind it,

again, because of Christopher's condition.

Bronchopneumonia can cause a wide variety of symptoms.

But of course, it can have an impact on your mental state,

because if you're lacking oxygen to the brain,

and if you have germs flooding around your body,

you can feel lightheaded.

You can feel dizzy. You can feel confused.

And it's entirely possible that your level of consciousness would

drop so that you would enter what his wife described as a,

"trance-like state."

No normal wife would dream of dealing with that

by hitting him with a rolling pin to knock it out of him.

(David) But that is exactly what she did,

regardless of whether she's prepared to admit it.

There's a lot of pride in the general body language here.

There's a refusal to alter her expression,

whatever the interviewer throws at her.

The expression is just maintained throughout.

There's no natural response, and that that's an indication

of a lot of pride in the personality.

Hannegret had clearly lost touch with any shred of common decency.

She would beat Christopher if he didn't answer a question

quickly enough or if she felt he was in some kind of trance.

She was evil. She terrified him.

And she ran that house through fear and intimidation.

One can only imagine what horrors

the children may have seen or heard.

I feel sorry for him, but again, I just feel...

I know how he was feeling at that time.

I knew my body was shutting down, and I was waiting to die.

I just thought, well, the next time I get

stabbed, next time I get hit,

it's going to be in the wrong place,

or the knife's going to go a little bit deeper,

or go in the wrong way.

And eventually, I just... my body would shut down,

and I can completely...

I'm uncomfortable thinking about it.

(David) Dehumanising Christopher,

which is precisely what Hannegret did, helped her justify

the beatings she inflicted.

So Hannegret is what we call a "victim as object" murderer,

meaning that she doesn't see her victim as fully human,

so that actually they're not that relevant to her as an individual

in any kind of emotional sense.

And the murders, the murders in these types of cases,

can often be the incidental, the consequences simply,

of her enactment of her absolute control on an object.

The murder is often incidental.

(David) I get the distinct impression

that because of the systematic abuse

that Christopher had suffered that he no longer has,

in Hannegret's mind, the status of being human,

that he's been reduced to being an object.

He's denied his humanity.

And because he's denied his humanity,

that, perversely, will allow the abuse to escalate.

Because once you deny that someone is the same as you,

that someone is lesser than you,

it is much easier to cause them harm.

Hannegret's initial wounding charge is escalated to murder

after all the forensic, post-mortem,

and interview evidence is collated.

Despite the massive amount of evidence,

she enters a not guilty plea.

(Neil) She also maintained the fact that she never

intended to kill her husband.

Despite her not guilty plea, she was found unanimously guilty

by the jury on the 20th of March, 2019,

and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 16 years.

(ominous music)

(David) Hannegret Donnelly is statistically a very rare killer.

Coercion and murder are much more often perpetrated

by men in domestic abuse cases.

But as Alex Skeel discovered, violence can come from anybody.

Christopher Donnelly discovered that, too.

At the start of our relationship,

it was the first relationship that I had, so everything felt normal.

But obviously, now I can look back and see things and go,

well, that wasn't, but at the time, I was happy.

It was nice to sort of tell your mates

that you went out at the weekend and just felt normal.

But obviously, things steadily gets worse and worse and worse

and worse and worse, and then...

I just find it weird that I was

sort of a young person in sixth form.

And then five years later, for no fault of my own,

I was about two weeks away, 10 days, from dying.

And I could feel that happening.

But it wasn't my fault that that was happening.

It was just a terrible place to be in.

And there's nothing I could have done about it,

because I literally had no money.

(David) Hannegret Donnelly had beaten and coerced

her husband, taking complete control

of his life and their children.

It was the years of degradation and abuse

that led directly to his physical collapse.

When he contracted pneumonia, his life was on the line,

not because of the illness,

but because of his wife.

(Clare) It might be easy to assume

that the most shocking element of this case

is that the offender is a woman.

We are perhaps very used to domestic violence

being committed by men.

But men are victims of domestic violence far too often.

And what this case shows is that this is a very real problem

that needs to be addressed, regardless of the genders

of the people involved.

(David) Hannegret Donnelly will not be eligible for parole until 2034.

Safeguards are now in place for the couple's four children.

Hannegret Donnelly wasn't convicted of murdering her husband

because of a single blow.

She was convicted of murdering Christopher Donnelly after years

of prolonged and systematic physical abuse.

You know, there are already a number of pressures

to keep the victims of domestic abuse silent.

And I think we have to acknowledge through this case

and through other cases which are similar

that there are equal, if not greater,

pressures on men who are suffering domestic abuse to keep silent, too.

(dramatic music)

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