Death-crash driver killed wife

Elizabeth Jensen was strangled and hit repeatedly

An inquest has heard how a man died in a road crash hours after his wife was found dead at her north Wales home.

Birger Jensen, 50, died when his car ploughed into the back of a lorry on the A55 near Penmaenmawr in Gwynedd in June.

Mrs Jensen's body was found at her home

Just five hours later, his estranged wife, Elizabeth Eleanor Jensen, 44, was discovered in bed at a house in Deganwy, near Llandudno.

She had died from multiple head injuries.

At an inquest in Llandudno on Tuesday North East Wales Coroner John Hughes recorded verdicts that Mrs Jensen was unlawfully killed and Mr Jensen, who he said had an obsessive personality disorder, had committed suicide.

He said he approached the case with a heavy heart because two children had been orphaned.

The couple had separated months before the deaths, but Mr Jensen, who lived in Conwy, had spent the previous evening with her.

The inquest heard that on the morning of 24 June, Birger Jensen told his two children, aged eight and 15, that their mother was feeling too ill to take them to school, and gave them a lift himself.

Stone

Pathologist John Hughes told the inquest in that Mrs Jensen had been strangled and hit repeatedly over the head with an ornamental beach stone.

The time of death was put at between 0700 and 0800 GMT.

Mr Jensen died just after midday when his Audi 80 rammed a parked lorry in a lay-by on the A55 near Penmaenmawr.

He was travelling fast and died instantly from multiple injuries.

Detective Sergeant Mel Jones told the inquest Danish-born Mr Jensen had been an inpatient at a psychiatric hospital in Denmark in the early 1970s.

He had suffered from a personality disorder and had been reported missing by his father in 1978.

Funeral

Mr and Mrs Jensen married in 1990. They have two children, a daughter of 15 and a son, eight.

Mr Jensen, who was known locally as John, had been working as a security guard at a local caravan site.

His wife worked as a diamond setter. She was having an affair at the time of her death, the court heard.

Despite being separated, the couple were given a joint funeral a week after their deaths.