shania.funurl.com

Shania Twain Sex Dance Woman Jailed

.

Telegraph - UK
June 23, 2006

A wife who shot her husband dead during what she claimed was a sex game has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 16 years' imprisonment.

Linda West, 49, sat shaking in the dock while she was sentenced for the murder of her husband Gregory at Winchester Crown Court.

She was found guilty earlier this month following a retrial after the original jury had been unable to reach a verdict.

West had said she was drunkenly dancing to the Shania Twain song, Man! I Feel Like A Woman, when the gun went off.

She claimed she slammed the double-barrel weapon on to the floor while taking a bow and shot her husband Gregory West, 45, in the chest, killing him instantly.

But the prosecution argued that the couple, who had been married for only nine weeks, had been involved in a row.

They said West had loaded the faulty shotgun and deliberately murdered her husband at their Southampton flat in May last year.

Judge Guy Boney QC, told West: "Your account of a happy domestic evening cannot be true.

"That must be the reason why the jury disregarded your account of an erotic dance which ended in the discharge of the shotgun."

In a witness impact statement read to the court, Mr West's mother Clare described how her husband, David, who suffered from leukaemia, died six months after his son's killing.

"Following the news of Greg's death, David deteriorated markedly," Mrs West said.

Outside court, Det Sup Andy Stewart, of Hampshire police, said: "I am very pleased with the sentence, clearly 16 years is very appropriate in this case."

.