Retired actor Stuart Mungall, 71, smothered 69-year-old Joan Mungall with a pillow in what he said was a mercy killing.
He was a devoted carer for his wife of 43 years who was left bedbound and in pain by Pick’s disease, which is like Alzheimer’s.
In July, the prosecution accepted his plea of guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
He said the strain of caring for his wife for two years had made him clinically depressed.
Mungall, who starred as a trucker in the chocolate bar commercials during the Seventies, killed his wife on December 3 last year at their home in Tooting, South London.
When police were called, he said: ‘Doctors say do this and that but they cannot make it better, so I made it better.’
Yesterday at the Old Bailey, he received a 12-month sentence suspended for two years. Judge Peter Beaumont, the Recorder of London, told him:
‘You were caring for her most basic needs with unstinting devotion. You come before the court as a man who has had a praiseworthy life.
‘You have earned the plaudits of all who have known you.’
He said Mungall’s plea to manslaughter ‘reduces your responsibility but does not extinguish it’.
The actor was also placed under supervision for two years and the judge ordered regular reports so that any recurrence of his illness could be 'nipped in the bud'.
Asked if he understood the sentence, Mungall replied: 'Yes, I do.'
His wife, who was also an actress and had worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, was left unable to move. Doctors believed she had only months to live and Mungall 'snapped'.
The Old Bailey had heard Mungall describe Mrs Mungall as looking into his eyes 'like an animal who needs to be put down and cannot say it'.
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Source and Photo: Daily Mail
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