A JEALOUS man killed his partner days after she returned from a holiday in Australia, where he believed she had been having an affair, a court heard yesterday.

John Bickford, 60, a heavy drinker, is alleged to have attacked mother-of-three Carol Chambers last summer at the home they shared in West Auckland, County Durham.

A jury at Teesside Crown Court heard that days later, he telephoned the man in Australia, and said: “I have got Carol, now I am coming over.”

Ms Chambers, 48, was taken to hospital from their home in Simpson Road in a coma on July 26, but surgeons found that the bleeding on her brain was inoperable.

Shaun Dodds, prosecuting, said it was too late for medical help. Two days after she was taken to hospital, doctors turned off Ms Chambers’ life-support machine.

Mr Bickford was arrested and admitted being violent to his partner in the past, but accepted only “pushing” her in the head on the day of the alleged fatal assault.

He told detectives that Ms Chambers, also described as a heavy drinker, regularly fell and knocked into things, and had complained of being dizzy on July 26.

That day, Ms Chambers told one of her daughters that Mr Bickford had hit her, and said to another one of her girls: “This head is killing us. I’ve never had pain like this before.”

Mr Dodds told the court that when Ms Chambers’ daughter, Colette, challenged Mr Bickford about the pain her mother was in, he is said to have replied: “She gives as much back.”

At 11pm, Mr Bickford knocked on the door of a neighbour and asked her to call 999 because Ms Chambers was unconscious.

Mr Dodds said that at hospital, Mr Bickford asked a staff nurse: “With injuries like this, would you be able to tell how long ago it was since it happened?”

Mr Dodds told the jury: “The Crown rely upon a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence suggesting a violent assault or assaults by this defendant upon Carol Chambers on the morning or early afternoon of July 26, amounting to the unlawful act which resulted in her death.

“There is no evidence of a fall or falls to support the contention that her injuries and developing condition can be explained otherwise than as a result of an assault by this defendant far beyond the push to the head he accepts in interview. His violence towards her prior to that had not been so restrained.”

Mr Bickford denies manslaughter.

The trial will continue today.