Killer slept with guns in fear

John Wickham had tried to throttle his wife. Photo / Supplied

A 62-year-old woman with multiple sclerosis had never before fired a gun until she pulled the trigger of a shotgun and shot dead her husband.

Dale Wickham has spoken out for the first time since she killed husband John in their Massey, West Auckland, home last year.

She did not take the stand when she was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter. This week she was sentenced to 12 months' home detention.

Justice Rebecca Ellis said a sentence of imprisonment would severely exacerbate her multiple sclerosis.

The frail Wickham's emotional interview with the Herald on Sunday reveals a woman still struggling to come to terms with what happened. She pleaded self-defence in the court case.

"It's absolutely surreal - my stance is life not death. I am the person who rescues animals, I don't kill anything. I don't do that," she says. "This for me is absolutely bewildering - I can't understand how I left to get from A to B to C - it is absolutely unfathomable.

"My story is like any woman's story. It is complex, it is intricate - it is very difficult for anyone to really understand. It defies fiction, really."

The court heard the couple had been married for 41 years and it ended the day John threw a bottle of spirits at her, tried to throttle her and told her "I'll gut you like a fish".

The relationship had deteriorated over that year, with John starting to see other women and psychologically abusing his wife. He even planned to leave her.

Dale Wickham said: "It was climatic. I felt betrayed. I can't understand why my husband would do that to me and I don't understand the agenda he had, so clearly it wasn't the right reaction and I regret it bitterly - but at that point in time it seemed the only thing I could do."

She was sleeping in a separate room to John and had two guns, a hammer and a knife for protection after repeated late-night visits from him.

"It had got to an absolute insane stage. John was about to leave. He had become physically more aggressive and I would often wake up at night and he would be standing at the end of my bed.

"I thought because he had heart problems he was ill, and I would say 'Are you unwell?' But he would never answer me - it wasn't just the once, he would just come into my room and just stand there - it was many times.

"It was intimidating and extremely frightening. You see with MS I have no muscle tone. I have never killed anything in my life."

Since his death and through working on her defence, she said she had discovered John had liaisons with prostitutes and there were even allegations of molestation.

Had she known any of that, she said, she would have been strong enough mentally to leave the relationship.

She said women of her age struggled to seek help over domestic violence because of a perceived stigma.

"We couldn't go anywhere for help. There is a lot of humiliation, embarrassment and shame. I mean, you present a facade, you put up a front to people. In my day my mother would often say to me: 'You have made your bed, you lie in it'."

The interests of her two children came first. "You play happy families because that is what you are supposed to do." Her two boys, now in their 40s, support her and one changed his name to avoid having his father's surname. She said she made sure John did not abuse them.

"My marriage, well we are talking about 40 years of deceit and my inability to recognise that. But I have to take responsibility for that."

John - who had had two heart attacks while running a wardrobe systems business in Dargaville, prompting their move back to Auckland - died the day she fired the shotgun, but the affair has had consequences for Dale, too.

She spent time in jail on remand. "It's designed for a purpose ... it is supposed to be hideous." But she said older people like her were treated with respect.

Since the trial, she has sold the family house - it settles this week.

Now it's home detention. "There is always a consequence you know. If you do something that is wrong you have to pay for it. I accept that. It is just annoying I allowed it ... words fail me."