A retired accountant has been jailed for at least 18 years after being convicted of murdering her husband, a former army lieutenant colonel whom she accused of decades of emotional and physical abuse. Penelope Jackson, 66, was found guilty at Bristol crown court of the murder of David Jackson, 78, whom she stabbed three times at their home in Somerset before telling a 999 operator: “I thought I’d get his heart but he hasn’t got one.” Imposing a life sentence with an 18-year minimum term after a 10-2 majority verdict from a jury of eight women and four men, the judge Martin Picton said: “I have no doubt you intended to kill your husband and it was a premeditated murder. Your behaviour shows a shocking level of callousness. During the four days of giving evidence I did not detect a shred of genuine remorse on your part for the crime you have committed.” He said he had given a higher sentence than the 15-year minimum outlined in sentencing guidance owing to the physical harm inflicted on David Jackson, to whom she had been married for 24 years. During the high-profile two-week trial, the defence lawyer, Clare Wade QC, sought to persuade the jury that Penelope Jackson had a “loss of control” after being pushed to the edge by longterm intermittent abuse. However, jurors decided that despite the allegations of abuse, Jackson was in control of her actions on the evening she killed her husband, and that her behaviour was not consistent with that of a person with a “normal degree of tolerance and self-restraint”. Picton said: “There were no doubt tensions in the marriage, points of friction the lockdown will have accentuated, but I’m quite sure he was nothing like the person you claimed.” The case is likely to prompt debate over abuse allegations. Some domestic violence experts believe juries often do not understand the concept of coercive control and are given no guidance to help them. Speaking generally, the domestic abuse commissioner, Nicole Jacobs, said: “I have been concerned about some of the sentencing of domestic homicides for some time, which is why the victims commissioner and I called on the government to conduct an independent review. It is time that we ensured that the nature of domestic abuse is fully understood in these cases and that sentencing truly reflects the reality and gravity of domestic homicide crimes which often follow prolonged periods of domestic abuse.” But addressing the court, David Jackson’s estranged daughter from a former marriage, Jane Calverley, accused Penelope Jackson of being the abuser in the relationship and suggested she had “taken advantage” of a culture that does not support male victims of domestic abuse. “My father was a proud man and this consequently cost him his life. He would not seek help from someone bullying, berating and psychologically controlling him because he would have viewed that as a man he should not be experiencing this and felt shame,” she said. Jackson stabbed her husband after sharing a birthday meal with him and their daughter via Zoom. The couple had argued over a bubble and squeak side dish, and then over the location of an iPad charger, before Jackson retreated to the main bedroom carrying a kitchen knife. She told the jury she had planned to use it for self-defence and later considered suicide. Jackson said she had entered a bedroom at home seeking an apology for the events of the evening. When he failed to say sorry, she said, she informed him of her intention to take her own life. She said he goaded her, suggesting she “get on with it”. Jackson told the court this was the moment when she “lost it”. She said: “I just thought: I cannot do this. It is not fair and I lost control.” Jackson slashed him across the chest in the bedroom and went downstairs to write a note of confession. Her husband emerged to call 999, and during the course of that call – in which she reported him telling her that she “couldn’t even do [the stabbing] right”, she fatally stabbed him two further times in the abdomen. In an 18-minute phone call to emergency services, Jackson told the call handler her husband was “bleeding to death with any luck” on their kitchen floor, adding: “I thought I’d get his heart but he hasn’t got one.” She repeatedly refused to help the victim when the operator asked her to take steps such as apply pressure to the wound or throw him a towel to try to stem the bleeding. Jackson confessed in the 999 call to killing her husband and claimed she was “compos mentis” but in a later statement she said she remembered little of the evening’s events and had been in a state of traumatised shock. Isabelle Potterton, Jackson’s daughter from a previous marriage who was raised by David Jackson as his own, told the court: “From the moment the PC knocked on our door and told us what had happened, I had not only lost my dad but I lost my mum too. Our life was changed for ever.” Calverley said her father’s death was especially painful given the family had already struggled to process the suicide of his son, Gavin. “Traumatic death results in a complex bereavement process and for me has brought back a lot of pain and significant trauma.”