A language school head who killed his domineering wife with a single punch to her jaw and then cut up her body with an electric saw was jailed for a total of five years yesterday.

Paul Dalton, from Kingston, Surrey, was cleared of murdering Tae Hui but was convicted of manslaughter at the Old Bailey on Friday.

During the trial, the jury heard he had chopped his wife's body into nine pieces, which he stored in a kitchen freezer before fleeing to Japan.

Dalton maintained he accidentally killed his Korean-born wife after suffering years of torment and provocation. She had treated him like a slave, the court heard. "She always got what she wanted. I was scared of her. Everyone was scared of her," he said.

Dalton told the jury he and his wife had quarrelled in May last year when his wife taunted him with an affair. "She was saying the most hurtful things. She was just saying she married me for the visa," he said.

When she lunged at him, he said he hit her in a blind panic. "As she came forward, I just lashed out at her. It just happened so quickly. I didn't intend to hit her," he said. "She was lying dead. She was not breathing. I looked into her face and she was gone."

Dalton said he later bought a Black & Decker electric saw, a freezer and a handsaw. "It was summer, it was very warm. There was a time limit. I had to do something.

"I moved her to the front room. I cut her up in the front room. I wouldn't say I took a great deal of care. It seems totally insane, looking back on it.

"I was really trying desperately to hide what had happened ... My brain was on fire."

The prosecution alleged that Dalton meant to dump the body parts in the sea or river Thames, but lost his nerve and fled to Japan. The remains were later found by his parents. Police eventually contacted him in Japan and persuaded him to return to London, where he was arrested.

Dalton, 35, admitted killing his wife and preventing the burial of a corpse but denied that he murdered her.

The jury found him guilty of manslaughter due to lack of intent to murder, having taken less than an hour to reach their verdict. He was jailed for two years for manslaughter and three years for preventing the burial.

Mr Justice Gross told Dalton he had committed a "very serious, horrific offence".

He said: "You lashed out at your wife in the course of an argument and in my judgment after no little taunting on her part. The blow was spontaneous. You did not intend to kill her but it was a hefty blow of sufficient force to fracture her jaw in two places."

Dalton, a teetotal computer specialist, met his wife in 1994. He told the court she was domineering and controlling. "She always wanted to be in control," he said, adding that she once stole his passport to stop him getting away from her.

They married in 1997. Over time, she bullied him at work, and denied him a wage from a business he had set up, he claimed.