Man admits fatally stabbing wife

Sentence on Tannahill was deferred until next month

A man has admitted murdering his wife by stabbing her 17 times with a kitchen knife at their home in North Ayrshire.

Allan Tannahill, 58, killed his 47-year-old wife Lorna days after she said she was leaving him for another man.

The High Court in Glasgow heard how the couple's son and daughter witnessed the attack in Irvine in February this year.

Tannahill later claimed the devil had entered him and he killed his wife to save her soul. Lord Turnbull deferred sentence for psychiatric reports.

The court heard how care worker Mrs Tannahill told her husband she was leaving him for another man who lived in Tenerife just days before she was killed.

Repeated stabbing

Mrs Tannahill left home and went to stay with her mother in Kilmarnock.

On the day of the murder, Tannahill had been at a meeting with a community psychiatric nurse at Ayrshire Central Hospital before returning home to meet his wife to discuss selling a caravan that they owned.

Later that day, the couple's two children, Kriss, 22, and Amy, 18, heard screaming downstairs.

When they entered the garage they saw their father had one hand over their mother's mouth and was repeatedly stabbing her.

Kris Tannahill managed to pull his father away, threw the knife to the floor and attempted to give his mother first aid.

Paramedics arrived a short time later and Mrs Tannahill was pronounced dead at the scene.

'Devil took her'

She suffered 17 stab wounds - 10 of which were around the heart area and others to the neck.

Tannahill, a joiner, was found 200 yards away, naked from the waist up, and covered in blood.

When asked to explain what had happened he told police his wife had left him and he had prayed to God to give him strength.

He said he prayed to God for his wife's soul but that the devil took her.

He stated he was unable to control himself and that the devil was too strong and that he had destroyed her to save her soul.