Yorkie Bar actor warned of jail over wife’s ‘mercy killing’

Stuart Mungall, 71, denied murdering former actress Joan, 69, at their home in Tooting, south London, in December last year.

But the prosecution accepted his plea to guilty on the grounds of diminished responsibility caused by depression following the strain of caring for her.

The Old Bailey judge was asked by the prosecution to jail Mungall because Mrs Mungall, who had only a matter of months to live, had not asked to die. Mark Dennis QC, prosecuting, said Mrs Mungall, who had a degenerative disease, told a nurse the day before her death that she was “taking it all in my stride”.

Mrs Mungall was smothered with a pillow in what Mungall saw as a “mercy killing”. He then took tablets to end his own life.

He told police: “At last Joan is out of pain and free from it all.”

Mungall found fame in the 1970s as the handsome lorry driver in the ads for the chunky chocolate.

He went on to appear in Casualty, The Bill and other television series. In later years, the couple ran a gardening centre in south London.

They were described as being devoted to each other.

But the business was sold because of wheelchair-bound Mrs Mungall’s failing health.

Mungall was said to have shunned offers of help in looking after his wife, although she received medical support at home.

The prosecution asked for a sentence of less than a year and said Mungall had served the equivalent of six months in custody before being granted bail.

But yesterday the Recorder of London, Judge Peter Beaumont, said he wanted to explore all the possibilities.

He remanded Mungall on conditional bail to September 23 for reports, including a probation report.

“I am not making an any promises but I want to explore every angle,” said the judge. He told Mungall: “You present a difficult sentencing exercise because you took the law into your own hands and you took a life in doing so.”

Mungall wore a dark green sports jacket and had thinning hair.

He had difficulty hearing the proceedings and had to be prompted with his lines when entering his plea.

Miranda Moore QC, defending, said: “He took the life of the women he loved.”

He had acted after he “saw it in her eyes” and Mrs Mungall had not shown signs of resistance.

He had been spurred on by the pain Mrs Mungall was in because of Pick’s disease which had progressed rapidly and meant she was unable to move.

Miss Moore added: “Mrs Mungall had a dislike of strangers attending to her needs. She wanted Stuart to attend to her.”

Doctors said he had suffered a depressive episode but he had now recovered.

Miss Moore added: “He thought that he saw that she was saying to him with her eyes, in his words, like an animal who needs to be put down and cannot say it.

“It was an expression in her eyes because she was in such pain.”

Mungall admitted his wife’s manslaughter.

He had telephoned friends and family telling them he had killed her.