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True Crime Presents - Season 2 - Episode 01: Murder On A Knife's Edge
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00:0136-year-old Wayne Coventry is looking for a partner.
00:05Wayne just wanted to be loved.
00:07But has he found the right one?
00:09Cadillia, she's got an evil streak in her, definitely.
00:13If she couldn't have Wayne, no one else could have him.
00:15Sometimes choosing a partner is the most dangerous thing we can do.
00:19He was absolutely exotic with her. He loved her to death.
00:23His devotion comes at a cost.
00:26Cordelia stabbed him in the back with a broken blight.
00:28Blood everywhere.
00:30She just smirked as if she knew what she was doing.
00:33Wayne Coventry, Cordelia Farrell, a fatal match.
00:53A bird's eye view of an ordinary town,
00:56which in 2019 saw an extraordinary love story involving a man called Wayne Coventry.
01:04A man close to his family.
01:07I was quite overprotective of Wayne.
01:10I was nine when he was born, and I loved it, having another little brother.
01:18Always got a smile on his face, like a Cheshire cat.
01:22I've never known anyone who smiled so much, to be fair.
01:25He just always had a grin on his face.
01:31He was bubbly and a normal child.
01:36He used to make us laugh a lot.
01:40Even as he grew up, he still used to make us laugh.
01:45Occasionally, the brothers overstepped the mark.
01:48I'd done something wrong when I was younger.
01:52I'd nicked loads of archery equipment.
01:54Police come out and search my mum and dad's eyes.
02:00Stolen some bows.
02:02And they did them behind the shed in the garden.
02:06Police couldn't find nothing.
02:08I'm just about to leave, and then my little brother's popped up
02:10and goes, that'd be all in the shed.
02:13And obviously, that was it.
02:16Yeah, got nicked there and then on the spot.
02:18And that's one thing that always stuck in my mind.
02:21He got away with it until he opened his mouth.
02:30As a teenager, Wayne falls for a local girl.
02:34According to older brother Sean, they have a good relationship.
02:38The first girl he went out with, he was with her for roughly 18 years.
02:44He was like a one-woman man, which was really good.
02:47When he was with someone, he was devoted to them.
02:50He was only 16, I think, when they had the first child.
02:54He ended up with three children.
02:56A girl, then a boy, and then a girl again.
02:59He did love the kids' mum to bits.
03:01Always had done.
03:02His kids meant the world to Wayne.
03:04He absolutely adored them.
03:11I lived together, and I moved down Devon together.
03:15Yeah, he moved there with his partner and his kids.
03:19Didn't see him for years after that.
03:23They were great together until, I don't know exactly what,
03:26I think they just petered out.
03:29In June 2017, the end of the relationship marks a painful turning point for Wayne
03:35as he faces the reality of leaving his children 200 miles behind.
03:42Then, obviously, when he moved back, moved up to Bromsgrove.
03:46He had his children stay with him at weekends and stuff like that.
03:49He doted on his children.
03:52His kids meant the world to him.
03:53He missed them when he weren't around them.
04:04Wayne will have been dramatically impacted by losing the family that he built up in his first relationship.
04:13This is somebody whose meaning, purpose in life, is now gone.
04:18It's somebody who now needs a strong figure, a dominant figure,
04:23somebody to lead him, give him direction.
04:26That somebody would be Cordelia, sometimes known as Delia Farrell.
04:31Wayne told me once and twice he'd been speaking with Cordelia.
04:37They lived in the same area, so they bumped into each other.
04:44He brought her up here.
04:45They had Sunday dinner and that.
04:48I mean, they're quite funny as a couple as well.
04:51My brother used to have this hot sauce that I don't know where he used to get it from,
04:54but it's the hottest thing I've ever tasted in my life,
04:56and they used to play each other up.
04:58And when they'd done them a Sunday dinner and that,
05:00my brother's come in and got it, and he squirted it into a roaster.
05:03He was like...
05:05Yeah, he seemed very happy.
05:08He just fought for that one person, and he did.
05:13He proper fell for her.
05:16There was no getting them away from each other.
05:18He absolutely fought the world over.
05:21To start with, he did introduce me to her, and we did talk.
05:28Wayne and Cordelia were mostly laughing together and enjoying each other's company,
05:32but then there was then that part of her that just was totally different.
05:42I took an instant dislike to her with her attitude and everything.
05:46She used to hide from me.
05:48I mean, locking herself in the toilet or in the bedroom just because I was there was ridiculous.
05:54I mean, I've never armed a female.
05:57She couldn't think that I'd knock her about or anything.
06:00I've never hid a female in my life, so I used to think he was stupid.
06:05Every time Wayne's father visits, we have Cordelia hiding, staying well out of the way.
06:12For me, it's as if she doesn't want to fully understand Wayne.
06:18She doesn't want to hear more about Wayne, to meet his family, because to do so would humanise Wayne.
06:24And at the moment, Wayne is just playing a particular role, a particular character within a melodrama that I think
06:32the two of them have created.
06:34Sometimes they could be excellent together.
06:36When they got on, they did get on.
06:39But then when they didn't, it was bad.
06:44Cordelia's behaviour can in part be explained by the fact that she was diagnosed with an underlying personality disorder.
06:51And the personality disorder that she got diagnosed as having was emotionally unstable personality disorder, which used to be, in
07:00my day, called borderline personality disorder, the borderline between neurosis and psychosis.
07:06But in layperson's terms, what that means is simply you're riding an emotional rollercoaster with somebody that has this diagnosis.
07:17They're volatile.
07:19They're self-destructive.
07:20And that's partly because they have no sense of self.
07:24And so some days they're really kind.
07:27Some days they're really pleasant to be around.
07:29And the very next day, sometimes within an hour, they can be a completely different personality.
07:36Because they have no fixed sense of who they are.
07:41And of course, if you're riding a rollercoaster, emotionally, some days you want to love and care.
07:49But the very next day, you might want to kill.
07:54With Cordelia knowing that Wayne was a decent chap, wanting a loving relationship, this gave Cordelia the upper hand.
08:03It gave her the opportunity to control that relationship.
08:08If he went anywhere, she'd have to know where or why you didn't want him being around other women.
08:15Even though he weren't into other women when he was with someone, he wasn't that kind of person.
08:19Wayne wasn't what Cordelia obviously thought he was.
08:23Wayne might not have been that type of person, but he does begin to make up stories of affairs with
08:29other women, which triggers Cordelia's jealous streak.
08:34There was jealous streak with Cordelia as well, which is extremely worrying and surprising, really.
08:39When you think, if Wayne doted on her that much, why would she be jealous?
08:43Because he's the one for her.
08:46If she didn't want him doing something, she'd stop him.
08:50It kind of paints a picture of this controlling, coercive behaviour by Cordelia.
08:55She stopped him doing a lot of things and seeing a lot of family members very controlling.
09:08During this time, Wayne has few pleasures in life.
09:11Wayne loved his motorbike, he loved them.
09:15Always tinkering about with cars or bikes, he was.
09:18But his favourite was bikes.
09:20He loved his bikes, Wayne.
09:24He loved his motorbike.
09:26He got it while he was living down Devon.
09:30Then, one day, the motorbike is stolen.
09:35So, one had stolen his motorbike and they dismantled it.
09:40We found it further up the road in an alleyway, dismantled.
09:45Around this time, Luck just didn't seem to be on his side.
09:50So, we never got to ride the bike again.
09:56Those who know Cordelia and Wayne are increasingly concerned.
10:01Sometimes fuelled by drugs and alcohol, they often fight.
10:05Because, of course, drugs and alcohol are going to make them disinhibited.
10:10And some of those underlying tensions come to the surface.
10:18They'd had a number of arguments.
10:20She would wind him up on occasion.
10:22She would watch YouTube videos that starred her ex-boyfriend in there to try and get a rise from him.
10:28And almost sort of looking for a fight with him.
10:34She'd get dressed up and then say that she's going out to make blokes and that.
10:38She knew it had wind him up.
10:40I mean, she used to phone him up while having sex with other men.
10:49What Cordelia does, this calling him while she's having sex with other men and watching videos of ex-partners, tells
10:59me two things.
11:00One, that to Cordelia, sexual power is incredibly important.
11:08And number two, that she doesn't feel she can achieve this through normal, healthy means.
11:14Every time Cordelia carried out some kind of abuse on Wayne, the inhibitions were reduced further.
11:23Each and every act just set the scene for the next.
11:27We tried to get her hardest to get her away from her.
11:29But obviously, you can't protect her when it's going through something like that.
11:33He wasn't ready to leave her. He loved her too much.
11:35The more you allow and permit this toxic behaviour to continue, the more normalised that toxic behaviour becomes.
11:46You forgive it. You expect it.
11:49To be in a controlling and coercive relationship for a long time normalises what is actually toxic within the relationship.
12:00And of course, if that is allowed to continue, that's very dangerous indeed.
12:06If you've tried to explain to him that you've got her wrong one, he wouldn't listen.
12:13As far as he was concerned, she was the right one.
12:16He was that bizarred with her.
12:20He absolutely loved her to death.
12:23But his father, Barry, becomes increasingly concerned.
12:27Some of the things he overhears are extremely worrying.
12:31She used to threaten him a lot over the phone.
12:33I've even heard her turn around and threaten to kill him.
12:36The fact that he expects this kind of treatment, so when he receives it, it's just what he anticipates.
12:45And he blames himself to some degree.
12:49And it triggers him to seek her approval more, rather than having the effect that it should have,
12:55which is to make him immediately leave the relationship.
13:01Wayne never thought about leaving Delia.
13:04He even turned round and said, would he come and live with me?
13:08I'd got a bed in the conservatory.
13:10He could have stopped in the conservatory and lived with me.
13:13But no, he wanted to be with Delia.
13:17Everybody tried the hardest.
13:19Everybody tried to explain this is bad for you.
13:21You can't keep on going through what you're going through.
13:23But he stuck with it at the time when she loved her.
13:28He used to say, look, I can't, Sean, I love her.
13:30You just can't do nothing, can you?
13:32It's increasingly clear Cordelia and Wayne are in a toxic relationship that they are both wedded to.
13:40It's quite clear that Wayne was keen to continue with the relationship with Cordelia, as she was with him.
13:46So it's very difficult to try and manage that situation when both parties don't want to leave.
13:50Having only recently separated from his partner of 18 years, Wayne doesn't want to be alone.
13:58They work together in a relationship, but in a very dysfunctional, pathological way.
14:06Most people would run for the hills when experiencing this kind of psychological abuse within an intimate relationship.
14:14Only Wayne's family know about the abuse he claims to suffer at the hands of Cordelia.
14:20In this situation, we've got a man who hasn't reported domestic abuse.
14:26And of course, there are some overlaps with why women don't report domestic abuse, fear of shame, for example.
14:33However, there are added elements when the man is the victim and the woman is the perpetrator.
14:40And of course, that relates to ideas, often outdated ideas of masculinity.
14:47By being seen as being the victim of a woman who is domestically abusing the man,
14:53the man's sense of who he is is fundamentally altered, he believes, in the eyes of our culture.
15:08In 2019, the police received a telephone call from Wayne complaining that he'd been attacked by Cordelia.
15:19She went round to his flat and that, and they were having a bit of food and a bit of
15:23drink.
15:24And then she sort of pretended that she wanted to have sex, so she put her hand down his pants.
15:30The next thing he knows is she's grabbing on his testicles, really badly pulling down on it.
15:37It was a vicious attack. He described being grabbed by the testicles and literally pulled around the room.
15:43Because of the pain and everything of that, my brother actually passed out at that stage.
15:48And the next thing he remembers is he's coming round with her, literally trying to bite it off.
15:55She was scary when she wanted to be. Very.
16:05Cordelia is violent because, in her case, her underlying personality disorder doesn't give her a fixed centre that she's comfortable
16:16with.
16:17She's constantly frightened that she's going to be abandoned.
16:21And therefore, that sense of being emotionally volatile is because it comes from a place where she doesn't actually know
16:30who she is.
16:32When you look at photographs of Cordelia, it's quite clear she's a very sexual woman.
16:37And she would be very conscious of how she could use her looks in relationships as a means by which
16:47she could control her partners.
16:49Add to that her emotional volatility.
16:53That's a very dangerous combination of factors.
16:58Eventually, when he got around, he fought the police in the ambulance.
17:02The police had turned up, so he's gone to open the door, and that's when she stabbed him in the
17:04back with a plate as well.
17:12When the police actually arrived, what they established was that not only she had bitten him, but also stabbed him
17:17in the back with some broken crockery.
17:19So this was quite serious.
17:22I mean, 58 sets of teeth marks. Yeah, they were all in his bits, his testicles.
17:26So at that point, Cordelia was arrested and taken into custody for questioning.
17:32She said she was defending herself from an attack from Wayne.
17:36But what was surprising was there were no injuries on Cordelia.
17:40At the conclusion of that interview, she makes a chilling statement.
17:44One of them will end up dead.
17:51He called me from the hospital while he was in the hospital bed.
17:54You knew it was going to happen eventually, you know what I mean?
17:57She just went that far with things.
17:59It was just unbelievable.
18:02This wasn't a usual domestic dispute whereby the couples have had a row and just fallen out and raised voices.
18:09This was a particularly vicious, nasty physical assault on a man by a woman, which is unusual in itself.
18:16It was embarrassing to say that you're getting beat up and terrorized by a woman.
18:23Many didn't look sign it to me, but you could see it.
18:28And it was hard to watch when it was happening.
18:31When it's a male victim, often there's a deep-seated sense of shame and embarrassment at being attacked by a
18:38female perpetrator.
18:41We hardly spoke on the way back.
18:45I asked him if he wanted to come and stay at mine, but no, he wanted to go back to
18:50his own flat.
18:53So I took him back there, but he didn't say much.
18:56He didn't speak much about it.
18:58Cordelia would one day tell a court she suffered at the hands of Wayne, too.
19:03He was never charged with an offence, but there's little doubt theirs is a highly volatile and toxic relationship.
19:12Having interviewed Cordelia and had her account where she is claiming that she was defending herself from an argument, the
19:19police don't have sufficient evidence to charge her.
19:22And so she's released.
19:24The police need to investigate further.
19:26While they do, safeguards are put in place.
19:31Cordelia was actually under two different non-molestations orders from things that she was doing to my brother.
19:38Non-molestation orders issued by the courts protect a victim of abuse by preventing their abusers from contacting them.
19:46But Wayne and Cordelia are still seeing each other.
19:50Oh, it was a risk, but you couldn't tell him.
19:55He wouldn't listen to anybody.
19:58There was no getting them away from each other.
20:00He absolutely fought the world over.
20:02When you look at the assault that took place on Wayne by Cordelia, any normal person would step back from
20:07that and think, that's it, that's the end of the relationship, you know, I've had enough.
20:11But that didn't happen with Wayne and Cordelia.
20:16The pattern we see here is Cordelia being the one to attack Wayne.
20:22He reacts, he responds, but he's rarely proactively initiating violence.
20:32However, around this time, Wayne reveals a shocking incident to his older brother.
20:38I received a message off him saying, I think we need to speak.
20:42And then all of a sudden I've seen a picture of my brother that I didn't even recognise him.
20:47He was just all black and blue.
20:52Seeing pictures of him, I couldn't stand him being beaten up like that.
20:57I wanted to get him here and keep him safe as well, so I didn't get a taxi from the
21:01hospital, which was in Birmingham all the way up there.
21:04After the mysterious beating, Wayne's family rallies around.
21:08We sort of kept lying up there, being a bigger brother and that.
21:11I just wanted to try and protect him as much as I could.
21:14In fact, Wayne is now staying with his brother, Sean, in an attempt to keep him away from Cordelia.
21:21But he can't resist her.
21:22He kept on disappearing and that.
21:25He was staying in a hotel with one of his mates.
21:30We put two and two together and we realised it was Cordelia.
21:34And Cordelia couldn't do anything wrong in his eyes.
21:38That's how much he thought of her and how much he loved her.
21:41He didn't want to be a part of her.
21:44Their relationship is like an addiction, something they feel they need, yet it brings them emotional and increasingly now physical
21:55pain.
21:56And it's a difficult cycle to break, growing more intense over time.
22:02And it's an addiction that is heading towards disaster.
22:17Wayne Coventry's bond to Cordelia Farrell is too strong.
22:22Despite promises to family that he would, he can't stay away.
22:28The couple are meeting in secret.
22:30They've been sleeping in the tent together.
22:32After what happened in September and all the other things that she'd done with him,
22:37when we found out that there was staying in the tent, we did say to Wayne, my brother, to bring
22:41Cordelia up and stay here.
22:44Because we thought he'd be better off staying here because we could keep an eye on him.
22:47She said to my partner and myself before that she'd like to bicker with him to keep him on his
22:51toes.
22:53She used to dollop and say to him that she was going out even if she weren't going out just
22:57so she could wind him up.
23:03The one thing Cordelia needs more than anything is to feel powerful within her relationships.
23:09And Wayne needs to be with somebody valuable, somebody dominant, somebody powerful, somebody significant.
23:15So the more she abuses him through this behavior, the more he wants her.
23:19And the more he wants her, the more powerful she feels.
23:23Because they work together in a relationship, but in a very dysfunctional, pathological way.
23:30It's a very effective relationship, but one that is heading for disaster.
23:37She looked at us one day and she went, my name's Dee.
23:40And then she sort of turned around to him and went, my name's Cordelia.
23:43As if she brought two different sides to her.
23:48She's developing different strategies, different personas, with different names are coming forward.
23:54When she was loving and bubbly and that, it was good.
23:57But then she could just snap.
24:00And then everything just went to part.
24:02It will be evident to other people that this is somebody very changeable, unpredictable.
24:07That they don't know what they're going to get.
24:09And it's because there is no stable core to Cordelia.
24:14This is somebody who is forever poised for battle, ready to be triggered.
24:24One minute should be fine and the next minute it should be a totally different person.
24:27People with this personality disorder are incredibly reactive, triggerable.
24:33They are volatile emotionally.
24:35They're not able to cope with any kind of disrespect or dishonour or any kind of assumed attacks on them
24:43and who they are at all.
24:46My partner actually said to Cordelia, I'm front of Wayne, you're going to end up killing him, you are.
24:52She just smirked.
24:55Behind the closed doors of Sean's home, the matters of Wayne and Cordelia are coming to a head.
25:02They got up in the morning, there was sort of bickering.
25:06Ever willing to taunt her boyfriend, Cordelia spots an opportunity.
25:11My daughter came here.
25:13She was a prison officer.
25:14So obviously she used to turn up in her prison gloves and everything like that.
25:18And Cordelia tried it on with my daughter in front of my brother to try and wind him up.
25:23She just kept on putting it on her, trying to sit on her lap, trying to flirt with her.
25:31She started doing him upstairs in the bedroom.
25:34Where she scratched all his face and ripped his t-shirt.
25:37I've had to run up and sort of say, well, I ain't come down and leave it.
25:41And he'd come down and he'd sit in the living room with me.
25:43And she'd just carry on, look, just trying to get a reaction out of him.
25:49But she couldn't get a reaction out of him and I kept on pulling him away to stop it getting
25:53any further.
25:55There was a point where she kicked him down the stairs and I had to run out and see what
26:00was going on again.
26:00She turned around and said that it kicked her up the stairs, but it was wanting to come flying down
26:05the stairs.
26:08It just got worse through the day.
26:12My brother did retaliate and slice some of her clothes up, two of her jackets that she had.
26:17Wayne's retaliation makes her behaviour worse.
26:22This is everything that she cannot bear.
26:25This is everything that she is fighting against.
26:27This sense of feeling overpowered.
26:30The move wasn't one Farrell was going to accept.
26:35My brother's coming in through the gate and was 11-year-old Stoney stood in front of my brother like
26:40that, as if protecting him.
26:44So even when some witnessed what was going on, he was obviously trying to protect his uncle Wayne.
26:49There's a few people at the house.
26:51Wayne and Cordelia go into the kitchen and an argument ensues.
27:03Standing up for himself is not what Cordelia expects of Wayne.
27:08The feeling of being challenged would have overwhelmed her, triggering every instinct to fight back.
27:15And in the heat of the confrontation in the kitchen, the most common place in Britain where somebody will be
27:23killed, Cordelia reacts.
27:26It's roughly about seven o'clock.
27:29I had a commotion from in the living room, so I've come to the gate there, and as I've got
27:34to the gate, Cordelia grabbed a knife out the knife block that was on the side just there.
27:40She was stood at the cooker with the blade in her hand, and it was the biggest one out of
27:44the block.
27:46She was stood here with a knife behind my brother's back, obviously because I seen the knife-off-shouted Wayne.
27:52He sort of took a couple of steps forward, and then it was literally as if she was waiting for
27:56him to turn around.
28:00As he's sort of turned around, she's plunged the knife straight in him.
28:08My brother-in-law shouted, don't pull the knife out.
28:13But she just pulled it out and smirked, as if she knew what she was doing.
28:18And my son was stood right by the side of me when she'd done it.
28:22A little 11-year-old boy.
28:27It was like my brother didn't realise what had happened at that time.
28:31So he's carried on and walked to here, and then he sort of must have realised, so he's turned around.
28:37He's just saying it was Sean, and that was it.
28:40He sort of fell down onto the floor here.
28:44People say he'd freeze, and I've never understood it before, but I literally was stuck.
28:49I couldn't move.
28:53And then that's when I've come running in, phoning 999 for the ambulance, and the police and that.
28:59And obviously I've had to get down on the floor and start getting my brother's last breath as if it's
29:05on the floor.
29:08So having stabbed Wayne, Cordelia immediately flees the address, and we don't know where she's gone.
29:14This leaves Wayne in a critical state in his brother's arms.
29:18She had literally dropped the knife and walked out.
29:21My brother's dying on the floor.
29:25And then obviously you see all the colours start to drain.
29:31All his breathing had gone for me, and I was on the phone to the ambulance, and they were asking
29:35me to count his breaths.
29:36And I thought that was hard.
29:39I couldn't do it.
29:40I had to get some help to come and do it.
29:56Sean found me.
29:58And says that Delia had stabbed Wayne, and she'd gone.
30:09When the ambulance turned up, I did run out there and try and say, look, he's not breathing, because he
30:14had actually stopped breathing.
30:16My brother-in-law was doing CPR and that.
30:18I was on the phone for three, three, four hours.
30:24During that time, the paramedics were there.
30:28They revived him for a couple of minutes.
30:35I kept him in here for hours, and I'd done open-heart surgery in the kitchen, but they stated that
30:39when they got his heart out, there was no blood left in his body.
30:42She had severed the main artery to his heart.
30:47Eventually, when they had to finish doing the work, you know, with Wayne, they'd literally come in and pronounce him
30:53dead at the time.
30:56Heartbreaking.
31:04I couldn't sleep that night after that.
31:08I was awake, couldn't sleep.
31:11And then, the following day, I'd come down.
31:15Sure.
31:17But, of course, there was nothing I could do.
31:30All his bruising and everything that he'd had from the previous fight, because it was only a couple of weeks
31:36before, all come out on him when he was dead.
31:42So, it wasn't my mind at all.
31:49Didn't look like him at all, covered in bruises.
31:53For Wayne's brother and father, their worst fears had become a reality.
31:59She kept saying that she'd murder him.
32:02She even told my brother-in-law in the morning, my partner's brother, Wayne's dead today, I'm going to kill
32:07him.
32:08But you don't think nothing of that, you know what I mean?
32:10But, obviously, she meant it.
32:15No, I never thought it would actually happen.
32:18I wanted to protect him.
32:20And I couldn't.
32:22The last thing he shouted was Sean.
32:32And I couldn't do nothing.
32:36Although it was a single stab wound, the attack was particularly vicious, requiring significant force to pierce through the chest.
32:46Cordelia was clearly enraged and intended to cause harm when she picked up the knife.
32:52So, this has now become a murder investigation, with Cordelia as the prime suspect, and she's on the run.
33:00Is anyone else at risk?
33:03I was scared to live in dialogue, like, of my son.
33:05I went after witnessing what he witnessed in there, watching his uncle get murdered, and then dying.
33:11He was worried about her coming back.
33:17It's important to try and get hold of Cordelia as quickly as possible, not only to ensure that she is
33:22in custody and can't cause any harm to anyone else, but also she then can't cause harm to herself or
33:28destroy any further evidence.
33:42So, the police would be doing their normal sort of inquiries of door-to-door, speaking to friends and family,
33:48looking at social media.
33:50If she had a mobile phone, then they'd be trying to track her through that, and also any financial inquiries
33:55in certain locations that might help close the net and bring her into custody.
34:01Was Cordelia Farrell coming to terms with what she had done?
34:06I think that, having killed somebody that clearly she was intimately involved with, will have brought her face to face
34:15with the person that she has become, and she now tries to run from that.
34:20She's not just running from the police, she's running from the reality of what she has become.
34:30If somebody doesn't want to be found, then it's fairly easy to go into hiding for a considerable period of
34:38time.
34:38Particularly if you effectively go off the grid, you know, you turn off your phone, you're not on social media,
34:44you're not in contact with friends and family, you're just hiding out somewhere.
34:48Throughout the Midlands, as pressure mounts on police to find Wayne's killer, Farrell shocks detectives with her next move.
34:56Five days into the investigation, having discovered Wayne dead at that address, Cordelia, surprisingly, gives herself up to the police.
35:11That's not unusual under the circumstances, if the police have been putting a lot of pressure on friends and family
35:17who may have been in contact with Cordelia.
35:21But then, eventually, when the phone call came through to say that she'd been got, it was a relief.
35:27The police still had a job to do.
35:30So, having given herself up, police would have secured Cordelia very quickly, brought her into custody, and they would have
35:36forensically examined her, make sure that she hasn't got any injuries herself, you know, was there a fight?
35:42Has she got any defensive injuries that need to be recorded? Has she got any forensic evidence on her that
35:48would suggest she is responsible, even though we've got eyewitnesses that say she was?
35:52She could still argue that, and so is there any forensic evidence that we need to recover?
35:56And also, you know, was she under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time? And so, various samples
36:01would have been taken for analysis.
36:04With Cordelia in custody, the police secured evidence and examined her for any injuries or signs of substance use.
36:13While eyewitnesses pointed to her, the investigation had to be thorough.
36:19Farrell may have handed herself in, but contrary to all the popular common-sense myths, she's not going to admit
36:27to murder, and very few murderers actually do.
36:42The 37-year-old Cordelia Farrell has handed herself into the police, but despite witnesses to the murder of Wayne
36:51Coventry, the case will prove to be far from straightforward.
36:58When Cordelia is interviewed, the officers put a number of questions to her, and she wouldn't answer any questions.
37:03And so the police are then left with, well, we've got Wayne dead, we've got the brother who's a witness,
37:10and we've got Cordelia who's been on the run.
37:14The only assumption we can make from that is that she's murdered Wayne and she intended to kill him.
37:19And so they go to the Crown Prosecution Service for an authority to charge her with murder of Wayne.
37:28Cordelia opened up a plea for manslaughter as an alternative to the murder.
37:35And what she's saying effectively is that she admits to being responsible for the killing of Wayne, but that she
37:41didn't intend to do it, and she didn't intend to cause him serious harm.
37:45It's an important legal distinction.
37:48Murder means life.
37:51Manslaughter can result in much less prison time.
37:54She just wanted to get away with it.
37:57She knew she'd have gone guilty, she'd have got longer.
38:02I thought Delia's plea of not guilty was absolutely ridiculous.
38:08She stabbed him in the neck.
38:10So where can she plead not guilty?
38:17And in fact, what she said was that she was defending herself because at some stage Wayne had put a
38:23knife towards her back.
38:26And so she grabbed this large kitchen knife, the largest knife in the block, and plunged it into Wayne's chest.
38:34And the police have to try and disprove that if they can.
38:38It's very difficult when you've got, you know, one person's word against another or when your victim is deceased and
38:45can't speak for themselves.
38:46And so you do your best to try and get corroborative evidence and, you know, the police would be relying
38:51on bad character evidence,
38:53where Cordelia had this violent outburst on Wayne only a month before the murder.
38:59But obviously what Cordelia is also painting a picture of is that Wayne was violent and that she was merely
39:05defending herself.
39:06And so it's quite tricky for juries sometimes to try and work their way through that information and decide effectively
39:12who's telling the truth and who's not.
39:15Wayne's family would be chief witnesses in her trial.
39:19Well, when I was giving my evidence on the stand and I seen Cordelia in the dark,
39:23she was actually smiling at me as if it was something to laugh about.
39:28She's got an evil streak in her, definitely.
39:32The jury is given an outline of events.
39:36They hear about the non-molestation orders issued against Farrell.
39:41Even when she'd done them last two fingers to him, she was still under the non-molestation,
39:45so she could have gone on remand on that.
39:55The moment arrives.
39:57Will it be murder or manslaughter?
40:02Cordelia Farrell is convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to ten years for the killing of Wayne Coventry.
40:09The judge instructed that she serve a minimum of seven and a half years.
40:15Farrell was also given an 18-month sentence for aggravated bodily harm to run concurrently.
40:23I think that the manslaughter verdict was a reflection of the fact that this was a voluntary relationship that the
40:31two were part of,
40:33and that there were escalating episodes of violence that continued over a period of time.
40:40Therefore, to some extent, the manslaughter emerged out of that destructive relationship.
40:52It wasn't enough.
40:54Nowhere near enough.
40:56I expected it to get at least round about the 20-year mark.
41:02Ten years was nothing.
41:04I couldn't understand it.
41:07I don't know how someone can get away with that.
41:10That just shows me that it's a dangerous person you're talking about.
41:14And I think she should have got what she deserved, really, instead of just the ten years that she got.
41:19My brother's lost his life and I'm never going to see him again, but yet she gets to walk three
41:23in seven and a half years.
41:27It's wrong.
41:30For the family, the trial could have turned out worse.
41:33A plea of self-defence might have seen Cordelia walk free.
41:39But that claim was something the jury seems to have rejected.
41:44The jury dismissed any possibility that Cordelia was defending herself.
41:50And I think what kind of helped them come to that conclusion was that Cordelia didn't hang around.
41:56You know, this wasn't a reaction whereby, oh no word, what have I done?
42:00I need to get Wayne some help.
42:02She plunged the knife into him, she removed it and then she ran away.
42:07The sentencing decision is devastating for Wayne's family as they try to come to terms with their loss.
42:16This has put all of our family apart.
42:19It's totally destroyed me, my partner and my son, after what we went through.
42:23We're all going through really bad mental health. It's just hard.
42:29And especially for an 11-year-old boy as well.
42:32Because he was stood right by the side of her when she put the knife in my brother.
42:37I'm still upset over it.
42:40I mean, the pictures that I've got, they're all laid out on a table, which is just Wayne.
42:49It's all the pictures and different bits and pieces.
42:54They're all Wayne's.
42:55This table is right by the side of my chair.
43:00So, I can see him every minute of the day.
43:06For Sean, spending time in the home where his brother lived brings a little consolation.
43:13It's the last time I was with him, I was here.
43:16So, looking to buy it, hopefully, eventually.
43:19Yeah.
43:21But I've got his own little garden round the side of the house.
43:24And then, obviously, he helped me build that gate where his plaque's on the gate.
43:36For the men of the Coventry family, their mission is clear.
43:40To urge other men to break the silence and report abuse, even when the abuser is a woman.
43:51So, if anybody's out there going through the same thing, please get help.
43:54Or please listen to your family members.
43:56Or people that can see what's happening, because they know a lot more than what you do.
44:01I know it's hard, but you need to try and listen.
44:04I wish my brother had a ton, but he wouldn't be where he is now.
44:09Just miss him.
44:12And I know for a fact if he'd have survived this, he probably still would have dropped the charges.
44:17Because that's the sort of person he was.
44:19He loved it a bit.
44:20And no one could say nothing different.
44:24When he found the right person, he wanted to be with them all the time.
44:28He was that sort of person.
44:29He weren't one for cheating or going behind the backs or nothing.
44:33He was good.
44:35He just loved her too much.
44:37He knew that it weren't right, but he just couldn't turn his head.
44:42He couldn't get away from it.
44:52Because he was besotted with her, he couldn't act staying by himself.
44:56You had to have somebody there.
44:59And Delia happened to be the one he was with at the time.
45:04Wayne's smile.
45:05It was just contagious.
45:11Just like a Cheshire cat.
45:14Always grinning.
45:15No matter what happened.
45:16Whether he was down or what, he always had that smile.
45:19Always.
45:20Everyone used to go on about it.
45:22It was contagious.
45:24No matter what was going on.
45:26He always had it.
45:30I miss him a lot.
45:31I think the line was when I was so aggressive.
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