Karen Palmer, 47, from the Wirral, was jailed for seven-and-a-half years after admitting a prolonged domestic abuse campaign against her husband, slashing and stabbing him repeatedly
A woman who repeatedly cut and stabbed her husband during a sustained period of domestic abuse compared to a “horror movie” mouthed “sorry” and formed a love heart symbol towards him in court.
Karen Palmer, 47, hailing from the Wirral, labelled her husband as “pathetic and worthless”, and would fly into fits of rage when she perceived he had done something wrong.
Palmer, who is thought to suffer from a personality disorder, would physically assault her husband with punches and kicks or wound him with a blade.
Her victim, whose identity has not been disclosed, was forced to use superglue and tape to seal his injuries, concealing them from the outside world.
The brutality culminated in March this year when she repeatedly slashed him with a knife and forced him to clean up his own blood. She warned him that she would ‘finish the job’ if he hadn’t finished tidying up the mess by the time she woke up.
A judge at Liverpool Crown Court told Palmer today (July 3): “This was undoubtedly a case of an appalling history of violence that escalated in seriousness as time progressed. If you continued in this vein this would have resulted in the death of your husband.”
At times, Palmer held her face in her hands as she heard about the ongoing impact of her actions on her husband. And when she was instructed to accompany the dock officers, she mouthed “sorry” to him and made a love heart gesture with her hands, reports the Liverpool Echo.
Christopher Hopkins, prosecuting, informed the court that the case was “highly unusual” and it proved challenging to establish “what has gone so obviously wrong as described by the victim”. The court was told the Palmers had been wed since 2006 but the relationship had caused the victim to become estranged from his family, including his parents and brother.
Mr Hopkins said the “reclusive” defendant was unemployed and had scarcely ventured outside the house over the past two years. The victim supported her financially and photographs captured by police following Palmer’s arrest revealed collections of “high value fashion items” crammed into wardrobes and “obsessively” organised.
The victim earned a substantial salary from his employment and the defendant controlled his finances through her own bank accounts to such an extent he was unaware of how much money there was. Mr Hopkins outlined a peculiar arrangement where the victim would go shopping, display the item to Palmer through the shop window, and then she would transfer him the relevant sum of money.
The court was told Palmer became envious of any contact her husband had with other women, especially those he worked alongside. He informed police it got to the stage where he would walk about while staring at the ground.
The victim grew increasingly worried about his wife’s mental wellbeing throughout the covid pandemic. The court was told Palmer’s aggression occurred following episodes where she felt her husband had failed to do something properly.
This might be something as minor as disturbing her sleep when he entered the bedroom.
The victim was reported to have tended to his own injuries using Gorilla Glue and clingfilm to avoid drawing outside scrutiny. Her physical assaults were coupled with verbal onslaughts branding her husband “useless and pathetic”.
The court was informed the abuse reached its peak on March 31 this year when Palmer launched an assault after deciding her husband had incorrectly folded the sofa throw. Her husband informed police it was as though a “switch was flipped” with the attacker seizing a knife from the kitchen.
Mr Hopkins informed the court that the victim attempted to protect himself behind a chair, causing Palmer to ridicule him. Palmer cut her husband’s ear with the knife forcing him to stumble over the chair, before unleashing a “flurry of blows” with the knife’s handle and the blade itself.
As the victim sought to flee, Palmer slashed the back of his hand causing blood to spray across the floor. Palmer branded her husband a “wimp” and declared: “If this place isn’t clean by the time I get downstairs I will finish the job.”
The court was informed that she then retired to bed, while her victim exited the property and dialled 999.
Paramedics attended to him for cuts to his hand, arms, scalp and forehead before transporting him to hospital. Upon arrival, doctors noted “numerous wounds that had been cleaned and glued and old wounds from previous attacks”.
The victim personally read out his statement in court, detailing the ongoing impact of Palmer’s actions on his life. Dressed in a grey suit and tie, with dark hair and beard, the victim took the stand and told the court that Palmer had “systematically destroyed” him over the past two decades, leaving him “forever broken as a person”.
He stated: “Part of me will never recover from this. Some wounds I can hide, others I can’t.”
He revealed he suffers from persistent headaches due to the assaults and has lost partial control of his right hand following a particularly deep cut that reached his tendons. He said:”Every time I touch my head I feel the divots and grooves from the many knife wounds.
“I am ashamed of my arms. It looks like I self harm because of the amount of scars.”
He disclosed that his body is covered in scars, adding: “Some of them scare me, if that knife had gone deeper I would be blind or dead.”
The husband characterised Palmer’s actions as “callous, controlling and calculated”, stating that the “vicious way of attacking me makes me think you wanted to see me in pain and fear”. He claimed Palmer smiled and seemed pleased when she saw him bleeding.
The victim, who intermittently broke down during his half-hour statement, said: “The sound of a knife piercing your head is the worst sound you can hear, but it was one I had to hear repeatedly.”
He only knew the assault was over when Palmer placed the blood-stained knife in the kitchen dishwasher. He confessed that Sundays were his most dreaded days as that was when the abuse was at its peak.
On a good day, he was hit, while on a bad day, he was slashed or stabbed. “When we bought new knives from Amazon I used to think about how much this was going to hurt me,” he told the court.
The victim informed the court that when he finally reported the incidents, he initially told paramedics it was an accident. Addressing Palmer, who alternated between crying loudly in court and shaking her head, he said: “I didn’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
He stated that when he eventually returned to the family home, it still required cleaning after the police forensics team had been there. “There was blood everywhere,” he said.
“It was like a horror movie.”
He mentioned that their pets still searched for Palmer and everything in the house reminded him of her.
He concluded: “It’s only now that I can look back and say it was not my fault. This was not normal…a large piece of me has died and I will be forever broken.”
Palmer was detained at the couple’s home address and made confessions including that she had become frustrated, grabbed the knife and “flew at him”. Previously of Centurion Drive in Meols, she had no prior convictions.
She pleaded guilty to a single count of section 18 wounding with intent at a plea and trial preparation hearing on April 29.
For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.