Jack Tindall, 96, who killed his dementia suffering wife after she said she no longer wanted to live has been given a suspended sentence

A 96-year-old man has been given a suspended prison term after admitting killing his dementia-suffering wife by strangling her with a dressing gown cord because she told him she no longer wished to live.

Devoted Jack Tindall pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of 88-year-old Ernestine Tindall on the grounds of diminished responsibility at Nottingham Crown Court.

The court heard he strangled her before arranging her body on a bed covered in lilies and telling police: ‘I’ve strangled her -the things you do for love.’

Judge Gregory Dickinson QC sentenced WW2 veteran Tindall, of Boughton, Nottinghamshire, to 12 months in prison suspended for two years.

Nottinghamshire Police said the couple had been married for 68 years and were 'devoted to one another'.

Mrs Tindall had been suffering with vascular dementia and needed round-the-clock care after a stroke in August 2015, according to the force.

She had previously mentioned to her husband and other loved ones that she no longer wished to live, police added.

Nottingham Crown Court heard that Ernestine had been Jack’s ‘rock’ and that she had told her husband: 'Don’t let me wake up in the morning If you love me like I love you.'

The court heard that the couple’s grandchildren had overheard their grandmother begging her husband to help her die on several occasions - and that on August 3, he gave in to his wife's wish.

Tindall's wife Ernestine was found in their home in Perlethorpe, near Ollerton in Lancashire

He told police he surrounded ‘her beautiful face’ with lilies, and went outside, where his granddaughter realised something was wrong and called police.

He told police who arrived at the home in Nottingham: 'For years we’ve solemnly promised each other that if anything happens - if it gets too much - we know what to do and I’ve done it. A promise has been fulfilled.

'I’ve strangled her. All the pleading and pleading and pleading and I finally done it.’

Mr Tindall, who served in North Africa and Italy during WWII, before being posted to Austria, where he met his wife, and the couple were married in 1947, and on their return to the UK, Mr Tindall worked as a miner.

The incident made Tindall one of Britain's oldest men to be charged with murder

The had a son and five grandchildren, and the court heard testimony from them that the couple were totally devoted to each other - and Mrs Tindall ‘wore the trousers’.

They lived together at Queen’s Court care home, where the manager described them as 'the closest couple she had ever known'.

The incident makes Mr Tindall one of Britain's oldest men charged for murder, as was the initial charge.

Frail Tindall had appeared at a previous court hearing in a wheelchair.

He was initially charged with murder, becoming one of the oldest people in the UK to be so charged, after killing his wife at their home in Perlethorpe, near Ollerton, on August 3 last year.

However, the court accepted his plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter.

Speaking after the sentencing, Detective Inspector Justine Dakin of Nottinghamshire Police said: 'This is a tragic and desperately sad case for all concerned.'

He was initially charged with murder however, the court accepted his plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter

Britain's oldest killer is thought to be Bernard Heginbotham who stabbed to death wife Ida, 87, in an 'act of love' when he was 99 on April 1, 2004.

The great grandfather could not face his partner of 67 years being moved to a fifth care home in three months and so slashed her throat in their bungalow in Preesall, Lancs.

He was handed a 12-month community order after he admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Heginbotham died in a care home aged 102 in February, 2007.