A father killed his two young children and estranged wife because he wrongly thought she was having an affair, an inquest heard on Monday. Paul Newman, 42, bludgeoned wife Geraldine, 51, to death with a hammer in the living room and stabbed Shannon, 11, and Shane, six, multiple times in their bedroom, using three knives and leaving a ‘horrific scene of brutality’ in the family home.
The Catholic covered their bodies and placed crosses, rosary beads, a statue of Jesus and a tiger doll on the children he was said to adore. He then travelled 170 miles from Allerton Bywater, West Yorkshire, to Anglesey and jumped to his death from the cliff top where he had proposed to his wife on Christmas Eve 17 years earlier. Newman, a driver, had been jailed for assaulting Mrs Newman in 2013, and although they were reconciled after he completed the prison term, their marriage had started to ‘disintegrate’, the inquest heard.
The couple had split up weeks before the tragedy in 2016 and Mrs Newman had told a relative that she was ‘terrified of him’. The inquest heard that Newman left a long letter on the kitchen counter after the killings which indicated his feelings of jealousy.