GORDON Asher strangled his wife, carried her body to his car and buried it under a half-built by-pass. But he walked from the courts a free man because his wife had 'cheated' him by taking two lovers.
Handing out a six month suspended sentence the judge told Asher, 'You have suffered enough'. The Daily Star (9 June) descirbed Asher as 'the tortured husband' while the Daily Express called him 'long suffering'.
Another husband was not quite so lucky when he killed his wife. Robert Anderson was jailed for two years after he was found guilty of manslaughter (pronounced man's laughter?) on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
But, like Gordon Asher, Anderson's wife was to blame for her own demise. She had after all refused to have sex with him for three months.
It was, therefore, understandable that when Anderson lost 'control, he lost it in a catastrophic way', as his defence put it.
Mind you he did seem to have gained enough control after the 'frenzied killing' (Daily Star, 10 June) to visit friends in clubs in Bristol.
But while women's lives are clearly expendable, and women are obviously to blame for the violence men subject them to, it's worth remembering June Grieg.
She is still serving a six-year prison sentence, imposed nearly two years ago, for killing her violent husband. Exposed to years of battering, she lived a life of hell.
Yet the appeal judges rejected the argument that she acted in self-defence. They said that 'there were various expedients open to a woman regularly subjected to rough treatment by her husband, but a licence to kill was not one of them.'
Yet a man whose pride is hurt presumably does have a licence to kill.