After 38 years of marriage, a woman has killed her husband by mixing 3kg of sugar with boiling water and pouring it over him while he slept.
Corinna Baines, 59, was married to her elderly husband for 38 years and was his carer at the time she attacked the 81-year-old.
On July 13 last year, the day before the murder, the couple had a dispute when Baines was shopping with her daughter.
Chester Crown Court heard that her husband called and seemed impatient for her to come home.
Baines was said to be angry with him but appeared to have calmed down. Yet later she boiled two kettles’ worth of water and added three bags of sugar into a bucket.
She poured the dangerous mix over Mr Baines’ arms and torso and left the house. He suffered 36% burns to his body and was found by police moaning and in extreme pain.
When Mrs Baines left the house after the attack. she immediately went to a neighbour, sobbing, and said: “I’ve hurt him, I’ve hurt him really bad. I think I’ve killed him.”
Woman murdered her husband by pouring boiling water mixed with 3kg of sugar over him while he was sleeping
Detective chief inspector Paul Hughes said: “To throw boiling water over someone when they are asleep is absolutely horrific.
“To also mix three bags of sugar with the water showed the determination she had to cause serious harm.
“The sugar placed into the water makes it vicious. It becomes thicker and stickier and sinks into the skin better.
“It left Michael in agony and rather than call the emergency services she wasted time by going to a house nine doors away to tell a neighbour, who she wasn’t close to, what she had done.
“Michael was an elderly man who fought for his life after the attack but sadly in the end he passed away.
“My thoughts continue to be with his family at this incredibly difficult time.”
Michael Baines, 81, died a month later, on Tuesday, August 18, 2020.
On Tuesday, June 15, a jury found her guilty of murder following a five-day trial at Chester Crown Court. She will be sentenced on Friday, July 9.
She faces life in prison for the murder at their home in Neston on the Wirral, England.
