A WOMAN who confessed to stabbing her husband of 24 years is the subject of a new Channel 5 documentary.
Penelope Jackson is spending the rest of her life behind bars for the brutal attack. Here’s what we know about her.
Penelope Jackson was a retired accountant, and married to 78-year-old David, who had been a lieutenant colonel in the army.
The pair had lived in Germany and France, before eventually settling in Berrow, Somerset.
David and the then 66-year-old Penelope had been married for 24 years at the time of the murder.
A number of startling details were revealed during the trial.
Before meeting the victim, Penelope married her first husband at the age of 18.
She had two daughters with him, before leaving after claiming he turned violent.
The court heard how Penelope’s second husband had been gay, and that her third husband had taken his own life when he discovered she was having an affair with the victim.
Penelope’s youngest daughter, Isabelle, was fathered by her third husband, but was raised by David as his own from birth and later adopted by him.
She had worked in administration and accounts in the Royal Air Force and then later the army, where she met him.
David had two daughters and a son from his first marriage, which ended when he began an affair with his second wife, Sheila Taylor.
The victim’s marriage to Taylor then ended when he started his affair with Penelope.
Shortly after David and the victim married in 1996, his son Gavin took his own life.
The couple’s daughter Isabelle recounted three incidents of “serious aggression” by her father against her mother that took place around 1997 or 1998 while they were living in Germany.
She said that David had forced Penelope against a wall and given her a bloody nose, and had also pulled a knife on her in a separate incident.
In a statement given to the court, she alleged she had been headbutted, strangled and kicked down a stone staircase by her husband.
She said the “extreme violence” had started following the suicide of the David’s son.
But David’s family and friends dismissed Jackson’s suggestions she had been the victim of sustained domestic violence and accused her of lying.
Penelope was jailed for life after stabbing her husband to death in a row over a birthday dinner after years of abuse.
She murdered David in their bungalow before making a chilling 999 call where she confessed to knifing him.
Moments after the murder, Penelope wrote a confession note saying: “I accept my punishment. May he rot in hell.”
After the deadly attack, she callously told a 999 call handler she had tried to stab David through the heart but that “he doesn’t have one”.
I should have stabbed him a bit more.
Penelope Jackson
The mum said: “I’ve killed my husband, or tried to because I’ve had enough. I might go and stab him again.
“I am in the lounge, he is in the kitchen bleeding to death with any luck.”
When police arrived, she branded her husband a “bully” and said, “I’m glad I’ve done it” as he lay bleeding to death in the kitchen.
When she heard officers calling for CPR, Jackson cried out: “Oh, don’t! No, no, please don’t. Ooh, I should have stabbed him a bit more.”
A judge told her she must remain in jail until she’s at least 84 as she’s shown “not a shred of remorse” for her actions.
Penelope described decades of physical, sexual and emotional torture by her husband before she snapped on February 13, 2021.
She also told jurors how David threatened her with a poker at Christmas in a row about a TV remote control.
Penelope admitted manslaughter but denied murder, claiming her husband was both violent and coercively controlling of her.
The abused wife said her husband was angry because she made bubble and squeak alongside the lobster, crab and steak meal they had.
Bristol Crown Court heard how the row was the “final straw” as Jackson had always hid his 20-year abuse from her daughter.
She said: “I was absolutely horrified that he was being so nasty. The conversation, which had been loud and chatty, just died.
“I said don’t do this again and started to cry and I went to the side and I was crying quietly.
“I was just inside, in bits – my whole birthday being ruined – all over bubble and squeak.”
The court was told Jackson “frighteningly” took herself to her bedroom with a kitchen knife and intended to take her own life.
She said her marriage had “just imploded” and the years of her “putting up with the violence, the unwanted sex, the belittling, stopping me doing things, all the horrible things” had been for nothing.
He honestly believed she was capable of carrying out that threat.
Sheila Taylor
But instead she took the blade into David’s room to make him “feel some responsibility” for everything he had put her through.
However, Sheila Taylor, David’s second wife, told the court that after her divorce from the victim had been finalised, he had told her Penny had threatened to “do a Bobbit on him” if he ever tried to leave her.
The alleged threat was a reference to a high profile case in the US at around the same time where a wife had cut off her husband’s penis.
Ms Taylor said: “He was very frightened.
“He honestly believed she was capable of carrying out that threat.”
She said that she believed her ex-husband “was afraid of Penelope”.
She was convicted of murder on October 29, 2021, following a trial at Bristol Crown Court.
A judge sentenced her to life behind bars.
She must serve a minimum of 18 years before she can be considered for release.
The Jacksons’ daughter Isabelle Potterton told of her devastation after her mum was jailed – and said her “whole world fell away from her feet”.
Only months before the murder, the bubble and squeak killer posted a photo joking about hanging a husband.
It showed a woman knitting a noose with the quip: “Quarantined with hubbie for two weeks.
“Gertrude is knitting him something special!”
David’s brother said in an earlier documentary that he was on his killer sister-in-law’s side when the gruesome details of the killing in February 2020 emerged.
Alan Jackson said: “I was watching the telly and all of a sudden, there was Penny being arrested for murdering my brother.
“I was glad, he deserved it.”
While relatives claimed that the third husband of the killer wife took his own life after learning she was having an affair with the man she eventually murdered.
Alan Warrender, a chief engineer in the RAF, killed himself after learning wife Penelope had been cheating on him with David Jackson, they said.
Warrender’s family said that the 43-year-old dad-of-four was in despair after learning wife Penny was cheating on him in 1993. He took his own life days after discovering the affair.
He was also drinking to excess and struggling with spiralling debts when he died.
One of his relatives, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Daily Mail: “There’s no question that the affair drove him to his death.
“After what she did to him and his family before she went on to murder her next husband, she should never be released from prison.
“She is a ruthless, greedy, angry woman. She is a danger to society.”
The new documentary looks at the moment Penelope confesses to the murder, all caught on a police body cam and released to the media.
It looks at the case in detail, examining whether the black widow is a victim of abuse or a cold-blooded killer.
A Killer Makes A Call: Black Widow airs on Channel 5 at 9pm, Wednesday, 3 July.
