Man beat his wife to death ‘in a fit of rage’

A HUSBAND killed his wife in a “fit of rage” when she told him their marriage was over, a court heard yesterday.

Stephen Hotson, 45, hit his wife Julia Tottle, 51, repeatedly around the head with a vacuum cleaner pipe when she asked him to leave their marital home.

When Ms Tottle’s blood-stained body was discovered by her brother days later, Hotson tried to blow up the couple’s marital home.

After being thwarted by his brother-in-law, Hotson then tried to kill himself by jumping from a first floor window, Bristol Crown Court was told.

Hotson denies murder, but admits killing his wife, who was known as Julie, claiming he was depressed and suffering from an “abnormality of mind”.

Prosecutor Adam Vaitilingam QC told the court: “By July 2011 it seems that Julie had had enough of the relationship and she asked him to leave. He didn’t appreciate that and he battered her to death, leaving her to die on the living room floor.

“This is a straightforward case of murder.”

The court heard that colleagues of Ms Tottle at a veterinary surgery in Weston-super-Mare became suspicious when the normally reliable administrator did not show up for work on the morning of 4 July.

When they rang her home in Kewstoke, Somerset, Hotson claimed that he and his wife had been ill over the weekend and she would not be going to work.

Concerned for her welfare, colleague Issy Gray called round to Ms Tottle’s cottage, but got no reply. Ms Gray was still worried and the next morning she went back to her friend’s home.

Having got no reply, she spoke to Ms Tottle’s brother Mark, whose shop was next door. When he got no answer at her cottage, he forced open a window.

Once inside, he discovered her bloodstained body in the lounge and Hotson slumped over the dining room table.

The trial continues.