Prestwich woman found guilty of murdering her husband

A Jewish woman has been found guilty of murdering her husband, in a retrial held after the collapse of the original case due to a deadlocked jury.

Daryl Berman, 71, had been accused of killing David Berman, 84, on 13 March 2025, at the couple’s home in Butterstile Lane, Prestwich, Manchester. She had contacted the emergency services shortly before 2pm on that day to report that her husband was injured. He was pronounced dead at the scene later that afternoon.

As described by the Manchester Evening News, prosecutors said Berman deliberately stabbed her husband ‘for a reason known only to her’, while she insisted throughout both trials that her husband’s injuries and death had been “accidental”.

Mr Berman’s death was not initially treated as suspicious. Only five days later, when a senior Home Office pathologist reviewed the case were the authorities alerted to the possibility of murder, with Dr Philip Lumb concluding that the chest wound showed “typical features of a homicide”, describing an accidental fall onto a knife as “very unlikely”. Mrs Berman was arrested that evening.

Mrs Berman told the emergency services that she had discovered her husband in the kitchen, after hearing what she believed was a fall in which he landed on the knife.

In the original trial, held last December at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court, the jury was discharged after failing to agree on a verdict despite more than seven hours of deliberations

In the second trial, at the same court, Mrs Berman again denied having murdered her husband of 27 years and denied lying to the jury, saying “I would never do that to the man I loved. It was the worst day of my life.”

Daryl Berman has been remanded into custody and is due to be sentenced on Friday 3 July.