Man who killed wife claims they were ‘cuddling’ then he ‘just wanted to keep strangling her’

‘I just wished she’d got coffee,’ Michael Davies told police. ‘I was fighting with “leave her go” in my head but I couldn’t stop’

17:19, 03 Sep 2026

A man told police he was “cuddling” his wife in the moments before he strangled her to death. Michael Davies said he fought his impulses but “couldn’t stop” squeezing the neck of Tracey Davies.

Mr Davies, a 58-year-old security worker, denies murdering his 48-year-old wife. He has admitted manslaughter but pleaded not guilty to murder on the basis of diminished responsibility.

Mrs Davies was found dead on April 18 last year at her home in Bryn Terrace, Cefn Cribwr, Bridgend county. Her body was on her bed while Mr Davies was slumped against the door with self-inflicted stab wounds, Newport Crown Court heard.

Thursday’s evidence began with prosecutor Mark Cotter KC reading a transcript of a police interview of Davies. It was his fourth interview since his arrest and he had largely answered “no comment” in all of the previous three.

At the start of the fourth, though, Davies was asked if he had killed his wife by strangling her before stabbing himself. “I did, yeah,” he replied.

He told police his wife had woken at around 7.40am that day. “I had slept in the bed that night,” he said. “I had slept there all week.

“She said she would get up and make us coffee. She went to the loo and I thought she was going to make coffee. However she came back in the bedroom and lay in bed with me.

“We had a cuddle and as we were cuddling she was lying on her back and I just sort of got up on my knees and put my knees on her shoulders and put my hands on her neck and started squeezing.”

The heavy-set defendant, wearing a suit and tie in the dock, showed no emotion as the transcript was read out.

“It wasn’t a rage,” he told police in the interview. “It just came to me to do it. I hadn’t hallucinated that night. I had a sleeping tablet that night but I weren’t [sic] doing it to get back at her for anything.

“My rationality wasn’t there. I just wished she’d got coffee. It was as if it had no feeling to it. I think she was holding my hands, trying to stop my hands on her neck. I was fighting with ‘leave her go’ in my head but I couldn’t stop.”

Davies said he was sitting on his wife’s chest while his knees pinned her arms down. He did not know “what part of me was working”, he added.

“I just seemed to want to hold her neck. I wasn’t screaming or shouting. I was just holding her neck. I kept the pressure on her neck. She did struggle. I just didn’t understand what was going on.

“She stayed in that position for I don’t know how long… I loved Tracey to bits but I just didn’t have any understanding of what was going on in my hands or why I was doing it to a woman I loved… I just wanted to keep strangling her.

“I was in such a state. I didn’t blame her for nothing [sic]. I wasn’t screaming. I didn’t want to hurt her, I just wasn’t in control. I completely lost the time length and I had no sort of understanding of what Tracey was going through… I wanted to protect Tracey all my life since I’d known her.”

Davies said he believed he had “let her move” but had then “got back on top of her” and continued to strangle her.

One of the interviewing officers asked why he had let his wife move and whether he had wanted her to struggle. Davies replied: “Perhaps I stopped her moving.”

He said he went downstairs to get his tablets and some water from the kitchen. He took a quantity of Tramadol pills – a strong painkiller – and a similar amount of paracetamol.

“I was panicking seeing the state she was in,” he said. “As I took the medication I had an overwhelming feeling to get the knife from the kitchen.”

After going back upstairs he lay on the bed next to his wife, he said, adding: “She slipped down to the floor at the edge of the bed and I had this feeling that I had to put the knife in me.”

He said he first pushed the knife into his throat and then twice into his left breast. “I felt the stuff I had taken was having an effect on me and for some reason I pulled the knife out,” he said.

“I just wanted to be gone. I don’t remember people coming into the house. The next thing I remember is waking up in the Heath hospital on the Saturday.”

Family members had attended the property on the Friday due to a lack of contact from the couple.The court heard Mr Davies was lying unconscious against the door and Mrs Davies was kneeling down, flopped over with her bottom half hanging off the bed and her face on the pillow.

The defendant had been working for a security firm in Abu Dhabi but had returned to Wales on April 11 because he had been struggling with mental health issues including “hallucinations”. Family members, including Tracey Davies, were concerned for his welfare after he reported feeling depressed and anxious.

He said he was in his third week of taking antidepressants and the night before killing his wife he had taken a sleeping tablet. That night he got three or four hours of sleep, which he said was better than usual as he had been “a bit of an insomniac” due to his stress.

Davies described himself as a “good person” who had not been able to fight his “negative thoughts”. He said he had stopped eating due to his depression.

He added: “It was work, money, Tracey. We had issues in some parts of the house and didn’t have the money… It was on my brain constantly, the thought of finishing out in Abu Dhabi and coming back to the UK to work… I couldn’t rationalise it. It was all one big storm cup.

“I was trying everything. Medication, breathing, walking, reading. I had good days and bad days. Work gave me a week off to rest, which I thought was what I needed.

“For the first couple of days I had a brilliant time. She worked from home, I felt relaxed, we had chilled… I was very apprehensive because I was going back on a flight a week later.

“In my mind I was going back and it would be another couple of months before I’d see her again. I couldn’t rationalise my thoughts.”

He claimed it was never his intention to kill his wife. Asked what his intention had been, he replied that he did not know.

“I was fighting it every day, my negative thoughts,” he said. “I think Tracey, love her to bits, was oblivious to it. Her work was so busy.

“Tracey and my sister, who has had a tough old life, were brilliant. I just wish I had reached out to more people.”

Davies said his low mood had only begun in the weeks leading up to the killing. During that time he had considered suicide, he said, but before that it had not been “a major in my daily life”.

“I’m just totally ashamed of what I’ve done,” he said. “I couldn’t sit here saying ‘no comment’. I owe it to her family and my family to say what I’ve done.”

The court then heard from pathologist Dr Richard Jones who carried out a post-mortem examination on Mrs Davies. He found she had suffered fractures to her thyroid cartilage and that there was “squashing” of the right side of her face.

Dr Jones said he could not exclude the possibility that Davies smothered his wife with a pillow – something the defendant denies.

But the pathologist also said it was more likely Mrs Davies had died because of pressure applied to the front of her neck as described by the defendant in his account of the incident.

Bruising to her left shoulder and arm were consistent with pressure being applied from above by Davies, Dr Jones added.

The pathologist was asked why he thought Mrs Davies had been found kneeling down given that the defendant had described strangling her while she was lying on her back.

Dr Jones said it was possible that the act of strangulation could end up with her in that position – as suggested by defence barrister David Elias KC – but the pathologist added: “You are in danger of taking me outside my expertise.”

The trial continues.

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