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A husband is accused of killing his wife after she taunted him about his small manhood and bed-wetting.

John Clinton knifed Paula, 48, his partner of 24 years, four times before trying to cut his own throat, Liverpool crown court heard.

The 52-year-old had drunk 10 pints in his local pub when he came home and found the 48-year-old on the phone discussing divorce.

The court heard that as Mrs Clinton was on the phone to the Citizens Advice Bureau, the furious husband stabbed her body, hands, and left eye.

The mother-of-two was next seen staggering down the street bleeding heavily before collapsing in Aintree, Liverpool, on November 28, last year.

Ian Unsworth, QC, prosecuting, said: “It is apparent that the marriage was in some difficulties in the days leading up to her death and on the day itself.

“Paula was seeking advice as to divorce and the financial arrangements which would follow.

“According to things she said to others the reason she sought a divorce arose largely out of the defendant’s drinking, culminating with an incident in October when he was stopped by the police as he was driving his vehicle and had drunk in excess of the legal limit.

“That seems to have been the last straw so far as she was concerned.”

When armed officers arrived at the scene of the killing, they found Clinton had slashed his wrists and neck in a “serious attempt” to kill himself.

Blood was daubed over a set of papers marked “ending a marriage,” Mr Unsworth said.

Clinton admits manslaughter, but denies murder, claiming he ‘just lost it.’

And he told detectives he was pushed over the edge by Mrs Clinton “galling him”, asking who would look after him with his bed-wetting and small manhood.

Mr Unsworth said that Clinton had threatened his wife with a knife a few weeks before her death and that “in drink he had become a bully and a dangerous one at that”.

The trial continues.