Meet, Marry, Murder - Season 1, Episode 16 - Clark - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[fireworks] NARRATOR: On New Year's Eve, 2017, as revelers across the country counted down to midnight,
David Clark became enraged with a WhatsApp message from his wife, Melanie. And then he picked up a knife.
BENJAMIN AINA: Why would a man leave his own separate bedroom with a knife, in the course of an argument,
and then go to his wife's room? NARRATOR: Is this the final play in a marriage fraught
with abuse, infidelity, and rows? Even when they are dysfunctional, and they've broken up and separated
or they're seeing other people, they are still having sex with each other. NARRATOR: Thrown into a volatile marriage, a lesbian fling,
and a chance for blackmail. A sexual encounter had taken place. She told her husband out of a sense of guilt
and out of a sense of shame. It gave him control back, because he was going to threaten to expose her.
He threatened to tell everybody. NARRATOR: Playing out in a picturesque corner of middle England, a drama to the death.
[theme music] Melanie and David Clark in 2011 settled in England after a life-changing decision.
They were both from South Africa. They met in South Africa. She already had children from a previous relationship.
NARRATOR: They had seen too much crime to feel comfortable in parts of that country, so a small, middle England town
looked just right for them. TRISTAN HARRIS: Bromsgrove is, you know, it's a small commuter town.
It's a market town. People come here because they want a nice place to live. They want their-- their dream life.
NARRATOR: The Clarks lived in a place called Stoke Prior on the edge of Bromsgrove.
Safe, clean air, good schools, the ideal place for a family of six to settle. TRISTAN HARRIS: It's a lovely village,
picturesque countryside. It's got canals. It's got a parish council. It's got a village hall.
It's got a great community spirit, and I think they would have been looking for that--
that quintessentially English village life. NARRATOR: When they had married in 2005,
Melanie and David were both enjoying a second chance at love. They had a familiarity, because they'd known
each other as young people. And even though they got married to other people, when they
reconnected, that shared history is quite a powerful connector in relationships.
They'd both gone off their own separate ways for many, many years. Melanie had married and had had four children.
Both going through divorces at the same time, they encountered each other again and formed a relationship.
We tend to be less idealistic going into a second relationship. We make compromises, you know, because, you know,
you've been through a relationship. You know that most relationships are about compromise.
So they both would have gone in perhaps seeing the faults of the other person and thinking, yes, OK.
I accept that. And it's only later on that perhaps Melanie would have seen that the eccentricities in David were
actually very difficult to deal with and hid bigger problems. NARRATOR: Benjamin Aina is a leading Queen's Council who
would one day become very familiar with the story of Mr. and Mrs. Clark. He was very regimented.
When he first met Melanie, he had his own way of doing things, like many people.
Even though he was regimented, he and his wife got on to begin with at the beginning.
She knew he was regimented, and she was able to cope with that, and there weren't difficulties.
David Clark was ex-military. He was a medic in the South African armed forces. When he moved to the UK, he began
working in a chartered surveyors office and later became an estate agent. NARRATOR: The life led by the Clarks
could not have become more standard, middle England. Bromsgrove was affordable, and the nearby tourist
mecca of Stratford-on-Avon became the place where David worked. He was an estate agent and good at it, intimately
knowing the selling points of properties that he would market. David Clark was a detail man.
He was just a man who was very tidy. His shirts had to be in a particular way. His ties had to be in a particular way, had to be
stored in a particular way. There's not a doubt in my mind that David Clark was a particular type of controlling individual.
There's lots of evidence to show us what type of person. He was he was obsessive in his neatness and in his order.
NARRATOR: When David and Melanie married, they had become a family of six. David's previously well-ordered world instantly shattered.
When he was entering into a relationship where she already had a number of children, and he-- he was
happy to enter into that arena. So he knew what he was taking on. The step-parenting relationships
can be quite challenging. You know, you're walking into an already set family unit,
and there are different kinds of expectations on you, as a stepparent, and it can
be quite a challenging and stressful experience. NARRATOR: Even more challenging, perhaps, for a man obsessed
with order and routine. He would very easily become angry with his children. His anger would be demonstrated by insulting them, swearing
at them, bursting their balls in the garden because it hadn't been cleared away.
It even-- to one extent when they had friends around, swearing at the-- their guests because one of them
had left a door open. NARRATOR: Things were tense inside the Clark home. It's always very difficult with a controlling person
like this when they are in a relationship with somebody and stepchildren. They don't have always a great affinity
with their biological children. Bring in stepchildren and the whole thing gets a lot more difficult.
It sounds very much like David had a very short fuse. His desire for order, his desire for routine
meant that living with four children and a wife who didn't share his desire for that type of routine
meant that he was an easy target. Small things could cause an explosion, and we often see this in domestic situations.
NARRATOR: David might have tried to exert control over Melanie and her children, but he
was not always successful. She's not a shrinking violet. She's somebody who stands up for herself.
Melanie doesn't present as what we like to think of as our typical domestic abuse victim.
She's not quiet. She's not submissive. She's not in the corner. She stands up for herself.
She's a very normal, confident woman. She would fight back. She would give him push back, and, of course,
he didn't like it. This was a tempestuous and toxic relationship. NARRATOR: Melanie refused to accept her husband's
rules and regulations. In fact, she rebelled against them. A marriage which had started as an answer
to a range of challenges was disintegrating. Clark claimed that Melanie would exploit his need
for order, that she would deliberately mess up his shirts that he liked to have in-- in order of color.
If he upset them, if he was bullying them, and I can't imagine he wasn't, it would have been very easy to get back at him
by just quietly messing with some of his routines. Perhaps, like he said, moving his shirts out
of color order, for example. NEIL LANCASTER: A man like David, who was meticulous, ordered, routine-driven and
process-driven, it would mean that he was extremely easy to put off his stride. You know, if simply by reordering someone's shirts
or upsetting their sock drawer you can send them into a rage, then it doesn't bode well for the future.
NARRATOR: Living in a new country, unable to control his wife and stepchildren as he wanted,
David Clark's behavior became increasingly unpleasant. Communication breakdowns inside their Bromsgrove home
meant that the married couple turned to their phones to exchange insults. The last three years of the relationship
was all caught in a series of WhatsApp and text messages, which the couple sent to each other.
And what those messages showed was that the relationship from about 2015 onwards became turbulent.
Mr. Clark had a bad temper. When they get into arguments and altercations, there's this real escalation where his language
becomes deeply offensive. And whilst it tends to be projected at her, it does get spilled over and get projected onto the children
as well. The wife of a friend comes to visit them. I think she goes to the toilet or goes to the kitchen.
She leaves the door open, and he swears at her, shut that effing door. Shut that effing door.
So these are examples of a man who-- he's not in control of himself. You wouldn't behave like that if you were.
NARRATOR: The Clarks' marriage had, by 2015, become toxic. From the very beginning, this man was
dangerous in that relationship. It's almost that the-- the-- the way that they were, the dynamic between them,
was kind of clouding his dangerousness. If Melanie had been a less confident person,
he would have been judged differently much earlier on. NARRATOR: They had swapped South Africa to escape violence,
but in picturesque middle England, Mr. And Mrs. Clark were creating their own brand of conflict.
How bad would things become? In 2015, 10 years into their marriage, David Clark's
controlling behavior began to take its toll on his wife, Melanie. Can you imagine what it must have
been like to live with him? He drove her to drink. It must have been like walking on eggshells, living with him,
waiting for him to just blow up at the-- at the next thing. NARRATOR: Melanie was often drunk.
David tried to control her drinking. Clark claims that Melanie had a problem with alcohol,
that she drank too often and to excess, and that she wasn't a pleasant person to be
around when she was drinking. He would do such things as leave Post-It notes around
the house, reminding her whether she was allowed to drink or not, not to smoke. When I look at the relationship between Melanie
and Clark, there is a high level of dysfunction and toxicity. She's drinking too much.
He's being relatively abusive towards her. But there's also some retaliation on her part.
NARRATOR: One of the things Melanie found hardest to accept was the way David treated her children.
The relationship between Clark and Melanie's children was very strained. In particular, his relationship with Melanie's youngest
daughter. Within the family home there was a 14-year-old daughter of Melanie Clark.
And-- and she did not have a good relationship with David Clark. He would regularly swear at her and use the C-word.
That was one of the matters that Melanie Clark drew to his-- his attention. That it's not appropriate for you, in a parental position,
to be using the C-word when swearing at a 14-year-old girl. As a mother, there is nothing more distressing than watching
an adult who is meant to take care of your children be abusive towards them. That must have been very, very upsetting for her.
He would be physically abusive. Melanie's eldest two children reported how he would fly into a rage, shouting and swearing at them.
BENJAMIN AINA: One of the sons in the relationship, he would describe him as being fat in a swearing way.
Was that really appropriate for him in a parental way to be describing somebody as a fat prick?
NARRATOR: In a town which was supposed to help her children escape issues in South Africa, Melanie Clark
told friends that she was living in a worse world. She was not willing to accept her husband's behavior.
She retaliates. She responds. She refuses to lie down and take it. In 2015, 2016, Mrs. Clark began to tell him that he
couldn't behave in this way. Melanie didn't hold back. She fought back. She would belittle him.
She would ridicule him. She would accuse him of having a small penis and various ways
of mocking him. He was humiliated. Melanie was somebody who, at times, was quite cruel.
We often get like that in relationships, you know, even with people that we love.
We say things that we know really hurt and upset them, because we want to, in that moment,
make them feel the pain that we might be feeling. NEIL LANCASTER: In my opinion, Melanie had every right
to fight back Why should she be putting up with all these years of abuse? Why should she be putting up with his control,
coercive control, all the time? She was a strong woman. She didn't hold back. NARRATOR: Despite so much conflict and hurt,
the Clark's marriage struggled on. There is an anger in the relationship. They want to hurt each other.
They want to emotionally abuse each other. And in spite of the fact that that would suggest a pulling
apart of their relationship, they seem so fixated on wanting to hurt each other that clearly somewhere within it they
want to be together. Because otherwise, they would just walk away. So they're hurting each other.
They're punishing each other. It's fundamental to that toxicity. They love each other, but they hate
each other at the same time. NARRATOR: In 2016, not long after celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary, Melanie and David's marriage
hit a new low. The relationship seemed to start deteriorating when Clark became completely convinced that his wife was having an affair.
Now they-- he confronted her with this, and she completely denied it. He decided that he would forgive her,
whether or not she actually did it, for something that she had or hadn't done. Now, I believe this would have given
him a huge sense of martyrdom, the sense that he's forgiven her. And you can see how that might set him on the road
for the way things turned out. NARRATOR: Believing he had been wronged by his wife,
David appears to have decided that he had a free pass to do the same. He had at least two affairs, and the relationship
deteriorated because he tried to hide those affairs from his wife. And she found out, and he kept on lying about it.
And she knew that he was having affairs. NARRATOR: Melanie was devastated, and the arguments between them became even more bitter.
One led to David asking for help. NEIL LANCASTER: So in December 2016, David Clark called the police.
NARRATOR: Melanie had demanded that he change his behavior. She wasn't going to have him in the house,
going on dates websites and having affairs. And he contacted the police and said his wife
was trying to kill him. He said that she had threatened to slash him with a knife, and he even went to the extent
of saying he was going to record it on his telephone. But then she wouldn't say it again,
which seems preposterous to me. He told the police that Melanie tried to control him,
and that she didn't let him do the things he wanted to do. The police quickly came to the conclusion
that this was nonsense. The police fully investigated. They found no evidence that anything
had happened whatsoever. NARRATOR: The very next day, another cry for attention,
a suicide threat. He also then said that he was taking some pills and tried to kill himself.
Melanie was concerned enough to call the paramedics to come and see him. NARRATOR: Amidst the gentle fields of England's Cotswolds,
a story of not-so-gentle domestic turmoil. It's really common for controlling people,
especially at the point of a really serious challenge like a separation, to start using
every control method they can. And one of the most common is a threat to kill yourself,
or even a kind of a para-suicide attempt where you may cut yourself but not enough.
You may take some pills but not enough. But it's very, very common way at the point of a separation
of trying to gain sympathy, trying to gain control back over the person that you're separating from.
NARRATOR: For criminologist Jane Monckton Smith, who has researched dozens of domestic homicides,
this incident should have been a clear red flag. Often a suicide threat in this context made to control someone
is a veiled homicide threat as well. And we always advise that that's how it should be treated.
NARRATOR: Indeed, just a few days later, David's abuse of Melanie turned physical.
This was on the 14th of December, so it was three days after the alleged suicide.
He went into her bedroom and he punched her in the chest. And there was an injury, which was photographed by her
of the mark on her chest. And he would only leave that bedroom when her sons came into the room and said, dad, leave the room.
Leave mum alone. Come out. This is a sort of flavor of where the relationship was
in December 2016. NARRATOR: At her wit's end, Melanie kicked David out. David Clark would move out periodically for a number
of weeks, days, whatever. He would then be allowed to come back, but it was very much on the basis of, you can stay
or you can go. He left the matrimonial home. But by March 2017, he was back. And the real issue, the real complaint,
was that once he came back, his wife was not prepared to have him having affairs.
So she said if you're going to come back, I'm going to need to know where you are on a daily basis.
I'm going to need to see what was on your mobile phone. I'm going to need to see your--
your emails. And for a man who liked to be in control, he found this very difficult. And then
that was the real problem, the real difficulty in the relationship. When a controlling person gets into a relationship
with somebody, there are rights and responsibilities. So the way they see it, the rights are all theirs
and the responsibilities are all their partners. So they will very often feel completely justified in having
affairs outside relationships. But the other person only has responsibilities, so it's their responsibility to tolerate this.
Here was a man who was having affairs and wanted to carry on having affairs, wanted to carry on going on dating websites
and stay in a matrimonial home. And she wasn't prepared to have it. NARRATOR: In fact, during one argument about his infidelity,
Melanie treated David to a taste of his own medicine. Now at this stage, this is an open relationship,
but so far it only seems it's an open relationship on David's part. So Melanie is not happy with this,
and strangely she makes him sign a declaration saying that she's allowed to have affairs with other people.
DR. JANE MONCKTON SMITH: I think Melanie was incredibly frustrated with David Clark.
He was operating a double standard. He was having affairs. He was saying to her, I don't care if you have an affair,
and she kind of called his bluff. Because he-- he was controlling her, so she's saying, all right.
If you're serious, write it down. NARRATOR: At the time, Melanie may not have intended to act
on that written contract. But just a few months later, she found herself calling
her husband's bluff, a sexual clench, not with another man but with another woman.
The key thing here is that she was having, maybe in his eyes, an affair under his nose on terms
that he could not compete with. This is another woman. This isn't another man. NARRATOR: Already feeling threatened by his wife's
refusal to buckle to his controlling ways, was a lesbian fling about to bring things to a head in the apparently
calm world of rural England? It was early in 2017 when one of Melanie's children
made a decision to escape the toxic atmosphere of the Clark family home. The fact that the youngest daughter, the one who
was having real problems with David Clark, moved out of the country, went back to South Africa
to live with her father, tells us that there were a lot of problems in that household.
Not just the relationship, the household. As her presence had caused Clark a great deal
of frustration, this, perhaps, relieved some of the tension, and he stayed living with Melanie in their home,
although they often slept in separate rooms. In fact, Clark moved in to Melanie's youngest daughter's
bedroom, a small room in which he slept when he wasn't sharing Melanie's bed. People are often in relationships
where they don't get on well after a few years or many years, and they stay together
for a variety of reasons. They might stay together because of the-- because of the children.
And indeed, this couple had adapted their lifestyle so that they were sleeping in different bedrooms.
By the time we got to 2017, they each had their own bedroom. NARRATOR: David Clark's obsessions around the house,
meanwhile, were getting worse. Something of the character of David can be seen by the way he kept his bedroom.
Apparently, he would keep cutlery and sharp knives, but in some type of an order in his bedroom.
Not probably because of arming himself, possibly just because that's how he was.
He had this strange character. The fact that he kept knives within his room of itself
was not that important. Because one has to remember he came from South Africa. That was where he was brought up.
In South Africa, he was entitled to own a gun. He was entitled to own knives. It's a different regime than in England.
NARRATOR: It was a sense of entitlement to have weapons nearby. That would become very significant.
On the 28th of December, an incident happens which will have lasting ramifications.
David's best friend comes round for dinner, and he comes with his 30-year-old daughter.
There is a lot of drink taken, drinking games, and then something happens later on that evening that will have
effects that will enable David to exert control on his wife for the remainder of her life.
One of Clark's best friends came round for dinner. He brought with him his daughter Katie, a journalist.
NARRATOR: That simple fact throws more conflict to the relationship in a way nobody
could have foretold. Whilst the men were downstairs, the daughter and Mrs. Clark were upstairs.
They obviously got on very well, and they spent a considerable amount of time upstairs,
and I think into the night and into the morning. The 29th of December, Melanie Clark
told her husband that she had kissed the daughter, and from that a sexual encounter had taken place.
She told her husband out of a sense of guilt and out of a sense of shame. Now this gave David everything he needed.
It gave him control back, because he was going to threaten to expose her. He threatened to tell everybody.
He threatened to tell Katie's father. It's something that he can't control, doesn't understand, can't compete on the same terms.
It must have been difficult for him, but also opportunistic. It's something that he could have used against her
to-- to leverage some control. BENJAMIN AINA: She was embarrassed, and she made her husband promise that he
would not tell any family or friends about what had taken place. And Mr. Clark gave his promise that he wouldn't do that.
They made up. They made love that particular day. And the prosecution's case was that he was now in control.
For the first time in a long time, he was now in control. His wife had done something that she considered was wrong.
She was asking him not to reveal this to the family. She was indebted to him for him agreeing,
and he was now in control. NARRATOR: Just three days later, David saw his golden opportunity to use
his newfound leverage to score points against his wife. On New Year's Eve, Melanie's oldest child drove Melanie
and Clark to a friend's house. They were in good spirits. They played drinking games, board games.
They laughed. They joked. Everything seemed fine. And at half past 10:00, Melanie and Clark
took a taxi back home. They have a great night together. They drink heavily, as often is the case on New Year's Eve,
and they do celebrate. So this is testament to a toxic relationship where they have good times together,
but whether it's to do with the alcohol, whether it's to do with the wounds that's going on
within their relationship for some reason, they start arguing about the relationship
that Melanie had with Katie. When they got home that evening, there's immediate evidence of a very, very loud, noisy argument
from within the premises that a neighbor hears. And this argument continued both with vitriolic verbal
abuse, but also in the form of WhatsApp messages sent to each other from within the confines
of the same house. There is taunting going each way around the alleged tryst, and it seems that this is the beginning
of the fateful incident. During this argument, Clark claims that Melanie taunted him
again, that she threw in his face the alleged affair she'd had with Katie, that she
mocked him for his sexual prowess and attempted to get him angry. And it is clear that during the course
of the argument, Mr. Clark decided, I'm going to teach you a lesson. And that started with him sending a message to his friend
and telling his friend about the sexual encounter which had occurred between the friend's daughter and his wife.
For some reason, those messages don't go through. Most likely because it's nearly midnight on New Year's Eve.
And he sent that message three times. There was no response from the friend. The revenge was not working.
And so Mr Clark decided to send a message to his sister. Again, there was no response from his sister
that made him feel that the revenge was working. And so he then decided to send a message
reporting the sexual encounter to one of his sons. And, again, there was no response.
And finally, he decided to send a message to his wife to say, I've told the family about the sexual encounter.
NARRATOR: The purpose of his message was to humiliate his wife, but it backfired.
Eventually it seems these messages do get through, but there's no response. Melanie decides now is the time to really press home.
She sends messages back to David, indicating that, everyone's laughing at you, David.
They've been laughing at you for the last 10 years. And it was in those circumstances
that she told him to leave, that he was to leave in the morning. So essentially, everything he had done to try and get revenge
and to punish his wife had not worked. Every bit of control David thought he had over this relationship was gone.
Melanie had taken it all away from him in his eyes by those text messages going through,
being told that everyone's laughing at him. And the clear theme of her messages was that she'd had enough, and that if he
didn't leave in the morning, she would call the police. And she also made it clear in the messages
that she wanted to end the conversation, probably because she wanted to go to sleep.
NARRATOR: If Melanie wanted to hurt him with these words, it had the desired effect, but she could not have
predicted what happened next. Clark couldn't handle this rejection. And just before midnight, as the country was preparing
to bring in the new year, he walked into the small bedroom that he'd been using and picked up a knife.
What man leaves his bedroom with a knife to go into another bedroom to see his wife whom
he's arguing with? There can only have been one intention. NARRATOR: For local journalists, New Year's day
2018 was not the usual tale of drunken revelers going too far. I'd woken up on New Year's day 2018,
and I always check my phone. It just comes with the job. You always want to know what's going on,
even when you're off duty. Obviously, not the best time in the morning after-- after New Year's Eve.
And I was just shocked to see on the West-- West Mercia Police websites this report
that there'd been a stabbing in Stake Prior, which is one of the-- one of the safer
areas in Bromsgrove. NARRATOR: Local news editor, Tristan Harris, doesn't get many murders on his patch.
Right at that point, there was not much known about it. It was mainly reported as a police incident,
and that a man had been arrested at the property, a 49 and 44-year-old victim. You start thinking, is it a burglary that's gone wrong?
Is it a robbery? You don't really know at that point. It could be a domestic incident.
NARRATOR: For local police officers, there was little mystery about who had killed Melanie Clark.
David then calls the police. In an expletive-laden 999 call, he just admits it, explains that he did it.
He said that she did his head in. He said, I've killed my wife. I love her. I hate her.
I'm going to kill myself. The police arrived just after midnight. They found Melanie dead.
They found Clark in his pajamas, crouched by the side of the house. He asked police to kill him.
NARRATOR: Searching the house, police confirmed that Melanie was beyond saving. Melanie herself was soaked in blood.
Part of the lobe of her right lung was penetrating from the wound in her chest. The clearest evidence that this was murder
was the evidence from the pathology. The pathologist describes a single blow with a knife that went through her pendant,
through cartilage, through her ribs, eight centimeters downwards. There were no defensive injuries,
which meant that she didn't put her arms up to defend herself. There was no struggle, evidence of a struggle.
It was just a straightforward attack with a knife. She didn't resist. Firstly, she wouldn't have been aware
that he was going to do that. But secondly, even though he's been abusive, this is out of character.
She doesn't have an expectation that this is a man who could kill her, so she's completely unprepared.
And that one stab wound goes straight through her heart. So he kills her instantly.
Melanie's eldest son's arrived home from their own New Year's Eve festivities to find the house cordoned off,
emergency services everywhere, flashing lights outside the home, and their mother dead.
TRISTAN HARRIS: In the Bromsgrove community, I think there was shock, sadness, regret for the family,
wanting to help in any way they could, make life better. Obviously, nobody could bring Melanie back,
but they just wanted to do what they could for-- for the children. NARRATOR: Clark was not about to accept responsibility
for what had happened. David Clark never accepted full responsibility for this crime.
He claimed that his wife's taunts caused him to have a momentary loss of control,
which made this happen. It was a difficult case to prosecute. Cases involving the death in a relationship
are always difficult, particularly where the husband is-- or the wife is saying that they have carried
out the act because of a loss of control or a sudden burst of anger. NARRATOR: Charged with murder in June 2018,
a jury at Birmingham Crown Court heard Clark's version of events. Clark's defense hinged on the belief
that he was the victim in an abusive relationship. He claimed that for years Melanie had belittled
and humiliated him, and that that abuse had caused him to lose his temper and lash out.
It was on that basis that he felt he was guilty of manslaughter, but not of murder.
BENJAMIN AINA: In the trial, David Clark remorselessly attacked his wife's character.
He called her dishonest. He suggested that she'd been unfaithful, that she was manipulative, and that her parenting
skills were not very good. He tried to make out that she was controlling, and that he was an abused man who simply snapped.
Even after the murder when he's talking to people about what happened, he's not taking responsibility
for his own actions. He's saying things like, well, you know, she was being horrible to me.
She was saying things to me that were horrible. So he's actually putting the blame on her
for her own murder. And then he says things like, I just can't remember what happened.
I don't remember picking up the knife. Anything, anything to take away any blame from him
and put it onto somebody else. Now because of this, the children of the marriage
were forced to come to court to give evidence about his long periods of systematic abuse
against their mother. NARRATOR: Also crucial to the prosecution's case were telephone records.
There were over 300 messages, if I can remember rightly, in this trial. NARRATOR: Using data mined from Melanie and David's
mobile phones, prosecutor Ben Aina was able to trace for the jury the course of this turbulent marriage through control,
infidelity, temporary separation, reconciliation, blazing rows. What those messages showed was that the relationship
from about 2015 onwards became turbulent. Mr. Clark had a bad temper. He liked to be in control.
He would very easily become angry with his children. His anger would be demonstrated by insulting
them, swearing at them. The messages showed that he wanted to control his wife. And when he couldn't control his wife, he had affairs.
So the suggestion that he was being bullied by her or cowed by her was just nonsense.
NARRATOR: This back and forth communication continued right up until the very moment
before Melanie Clark's murder. BENJAMIN AINA: The text messages and WhatsApp exchanges
between them in the last hour of her life showed that he was trying to provoke her,
not the other way around. Most of his abusive messages to her go unanswered, and at the end she-- it's almost like she gave up.
I just want to go to sleep. Just be gone in the morning. And I think it's the fact that she--
she didn't rise to his bait. She didn't react. She didn't explode. She just laughed at him, and I think
that that was the final-- the final straw for him that I've lost control again. Every bit of control David thought
he had over this relationship was gone. Melanie had taken it all away from him, in his eyes,
by those text messages going through, being told that everyone's laughing at him.
He just lost it, so he just went in there and he stabbed her till she was dead. The prosecution's case was one of murder.
His case was, no, this is manslaughter by reason of loss of control. And those are always difficult cases.
There was a single stab wound. There had been an argument. It had been a turbulent relationship.
And so the prosecution had to show, make a jury sure, that he intended to kill his wife,
or he intended to cause her really serious harm. I do believe that Clark went into that room with that knife
to kill her in that moment. NARRATOR: This was the prosecution's case. Would the jury be convinced?
It's actually really, really difficult to convict somebody of murder with one stab.
Really difficult. NARRATOR: David Clark rejected all of the evidence put to him.
In his eyes, he was the victim in this marriage. He gave evidence in a muted voice.
He-- there was no eye contact between me and him. He would look down. And when the abusive text messages were put to him,
his stock answer was, that's just me, an example of me sticking up for myself. He couldn't see that there was anything wrong with it.
I think that at some level, he has succeeded in putting some of the blame for this murder
at Melanie's feet. Because, you know, she-- she has been described as somebody who was provocative to him.
You know, that-- that kind of language says to us she was pushing him to doing something
that any reasonable person would have done. It's really interesting in cases like this
where a woman gets murdered, and when you dig into the information, you find that she didn't
take it lying down, you know? She fought back. She was nasty and cruel at times, as so many of us
are in relationships. And suddenly, there is this suggestion that somehow because of her unwillingness to behave
as a lady, she deserved to die. NARRATOR: This was the version of events that QC Ben Aina effort to convince the jury to reject.
If he could not, there really was a chance that Clark would get away with murder.
Everyone has been in a relationship which is difficult, so you know that you're going to have to persuade the jury that a crime has been
committed rather than someone losing their temper in the course of a relationship.
Juries will give the benefit of the doubt to a spouse who has killed another spouse if they think
that that person has been browbeaten and has been treated in a very bad way. Nobody was suggesting that Melanie Clark was a saint,
but I don't think the jury liked him. They weren't prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt,
because they didn't like him. They didn't like how he behaved in the relationship.
And as I've said, which man leaves a room with a knife and an argument to go to his wife's separate bedroom?
On the 27th of June, the jury rejected this defense. They found him guilty of murder.
The court completely rejected his version of events. He was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.
The judge ruled that when Clark went into his bedroom and fetched the knife, he had every intention
of murdering Melanie. NARRATOR: A marriage of less than 11 years, a second chance at love for a couple in their 40s,
had ended in bloodshed. Four children were left without a mother. These are still young people, still in their formative years.
And even Melanie's oldest son has struggled with her death and with living independently as a result.
I can't see a way out, he said in his victim impact statement, and sometimes I wish I wasn't alive.
TRISTAN HARRIS: It was a sad, sorry situation. And this, which was a street in picturesque Worcestershire,
will now forever be known for a brutal murder. [music playing]

Melanie and David Clark's marriage was volatile, passionate and sometimes abusive. It ended when one of them snapped and picked up a knife.

Though wedded couples vow to stay together until death do they part, this new true crime series looks at what happens when a groom or bride causes their beloved's death.

Brief Summary

David Clark murdered his wife Melanie on New Year's Eve 2017 after years of domestic abuse and conflict over infidelity.

Key points

A Marriage in Turmoil. David and Melanie Clark's relationship is marked by control, conflict, and dysfunction.
The Turning Point. In 2016, David's controlling behavior escalates, leading to severe conflict.
A Dangerous Dynamic. David's threats and controlling behavior reveal a toxic marriage on the brink.
A Night of Revelry Turns Dark. New Year's Eve celebrations escalate into a violent argument, revealing deep-seated issues.
The Fatal Decision. In a moment of rage, David Clark picks up a knife, leading to tragedy.
The Aftermath of Violence. The community is left in shock as news of the murder spreads.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Why would a man leave his own separate bedroom with a knife?

Benjamin Aina questions David's actions during an argument.

0:17WatchJun 8, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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