A City banker strangled his wife after bugging her phone calls and discovering she was having an affair with their son's tennis coach, a jury heard today. Neil Ellerbeck, 46, an HSBC executive, feared his marriage would end and had hidden over £500,000 to keep it out of any divorce settlement.
The Old Bailey heard that Ellerbeck, who was himself having an affair, bugged more than 127 hours of his wife Kate's phone calls. The recordings revealed she was having two affairs, planned to divorce him, and had told her lover her children would 'love' him. Last November, Kate Ellerbeck, 45, was found strangled at the couple's home in Enfield, north London.
Prosecutor Edward Brown QC said Ellerbeck acted out of 'very considerable anger' when his wife's behaviour became too much for the 'obsessive and jealous man'. A postmortem showed 45 marks on the victim's body, including signs of asphyxia from 20 to 30 seconds of sustained pressure. Ellerbeck denies murder, claiming he fought back after his wife attacked him.
Police found spy gadgets in Ellerbeck's office, including a memory stick with the recordings and devices to monitor his wife's emails and texts. The court heard Ellerbeck had been withdrawing £500 daily over 13 months, totalling £103,000, and transferred over £430,000 to his sister's account, along with £35,000 to a friend of his mistress.
