Horror Moment Wife Killed Her Violent Hubby

A woman who shot her husband dead but was cleared of both murder and manslaughter has described how she drugged his food then with both hands shaking, "lined it up and fired".

Earlier this month, a jury in the Australian city of Brisbane took only 90 minutes to find Susan Falls not guilty of killing her husband Rodney, because they believed he had been violent and abusive to her.


She told Channel Nine's A Current Affair program the final straw was when he threatened to kill one of their four children and made her draw lots to decide which one.


Soon after the incident, Mrs Falls sent her 16-year-old daughter to meet a man who would sell her a gun with a silencer for $5,000.


One evening in May 2006, she drugged her husband with sleeping tablets by crushing them and mixing them into his favourite meal - curried prawns.


"When I saw that he'd dozed off, and to me what seemed he was asleep, I went and got changed," she recounted.


"I put pyjamas on, I tied my hair back, I had socks on, gloves, took all my jewellery off.


"I didn't know how much mess there'd be. I thought once I shot him, I'd be splattered in blood.


"I got the gun and the bullets... and I remember looking at the two and looking at the bullets and thinking, how can something so tiny kill somebody?


"It just didn't seem real holding them in my hand. I had my arms outstretched... the gun was heavy because it had a silencer on it.


"I was shaking so much, so I needed two hands... and I just lined it up and fired.


"I ran behind the cupboards and I crouched down and I pulled the cartridge out of the gun because I was scared that he was going to get up, and if these bullets were still in the gun he'd shoot me.


"So I pulled them out. And I'm just crouching there and the girls were there. And I asked them if they still loved me.


"And they said that they did, and then I heard - it was like a tap dripping. And I peered past the cupboard and I could see this blood just coming out

of his head."


But he was still alive and for three hours she and her children debated what to do before Mrs Falls fired another shot into his head. Even then, he was not dead.


"It was like, full bottle of sleeping tablets, two bullets to the head and he's still breathing. And I've got nothing left, nothing at all. To me he was like the Terminator."


She was about to suffocate him with a duvet when he finally stopped breathing.


"I did cry. I can't say that I cried because I missed him - because, he forced me, he pushed me, he gave me no choice.


"When I went to fire that second shot, he had a dry tear stain down his face. I momentarily felt sorry for him, that he had suffered.


"And I thought, well he didn't feel sorry for me. This was the first and only time that I really hurt him."


The men who helped her dispose of the body were also acquitted of being accomplices.