But like many elderly left alone to care for partners with Alzheimer's disease, Mr Parry - whose family live abroad - got no help. When he eventually found a place for his wife, who had suffered from dementia for six years, she was sent home shortly after arriving because staff said they could not control her.
Hours later police and ambulance responded to a call from Mr Parry and found his wife's body at the farmhouse. Mr Parry was sitting in the kitchen having tried to take his own life. He told officers: 'I don't regret it.'
He revealed that he had spiked his wife's cocoa with sleeping tablets before suffocating her.
Mr Parry was charged with murder the following day.
He went missing while on bail in December, two days before he was due to appear at Carlisle Crown Court. His body was found in a remote stretch of the River Eden.
The inquest at Cumbria Coroner's Court heard how the couple, whose son lives in the US and who lived quiet, isloated lives, had entered into a pact. In a note intended to be left to the local coroner and his brother-in-law in Australia, Mr Parry wrote: 'We have both promised that we would not allow ourselves to go into care with dementia.
'We have had a long life together, and despite what has happened I am pleased that I had the courage to keep our promise.'
PC Ruth Coates wept as she told the inquest how Mr Parry had described the desperation that drove him to kill his wife. Mrs Parry had been sent home from the Greenlane Care Home in Brampton, Cumbria, after she escaped from her room.
'He said she'd been returned like a farm animal,' she said.
Lorraine Rudd-Williams, from Cumbria County Council, said: 'It is a matter of concern that she should be discharged home without the care home knowing the circumstances of the carer.
'I would have expected them either to seek advice from the social services' urgent care team, or consider letting Mrs Parry remain at the home overnight.'
The tragedy took a further twist when paramedics told Mr Parry that he could have had his wife admitted to hospital. The grief-stricken academic replied: 'So I need not have done all this?'
Only three months before the tragedy, a major search was launched when Mrs Parry went missing from the couple's home in the Eden Valley. Sergeant Claire Sampson of Cumbria Police told how she spoke to a desolate Mr Parry as he dealt with the disappearance. 'He became tearful as I made him a cup of tea. He said it had been a long time since anybody had done this for him,' she said.
'He reminisced about when she was well and a teacher.
'He said how saddened he was by his wife's disease, how it had taken her away and how overwhelmed he felt about the cruelty of the illness that his wife was suffering.'
She told the hearing how Mr Parry immediately sprang to his wife's side when rescuers brought her home. 'He sat down and cared for her, checking her for injuries, removing her wet socks and debris from her hair,' she said.
In response to allegations at the inquest that Mrs Parry had not been treated properly, a spokesman for Greenlane Care Home said: 'I'm not bothered what they said. We are not commenting.'
The hearing continues.
- Daily Mail
