Dempsey Nibbs who beheaded wife and flushed her head down the toilet in act of 'grotesque savagery' jailed for life

Nibbs, 69, believed his wife was going to leave him following an affair

Dempsey Nibbs murdered his wife and decapitated her before flushing her head down the toilet (Met Police)

A man who decapitated his wife of 30 years and flushed her head down the toilet in an act of “grotesque savagery” has been jailed for life.

Dempsey Nibbs, 69, believed his wife Judith had been having an affair and would leave him, and used this reasoning to launch a brutal attack on her.

He has been jailed for a minimum of 21 years for what the judge called an act of “grotesque savagery,” and has acknowledged that his suffering from prostate cancer means he will likely die in jail.

Nibbs, a crane driver, knocked his wife out with an iron bar at their flat in Hoxton on the evening of 10 April before cutting her head off, smashing it up with a mallet and flushing it down the toilet. He then wrote a note to his 30-year-old son, Kirk, and called 999 to tell police they would find two bodies at the property.

When officers arrived at the scene in the early hours of 11 April they found Nibbs holding a knife and a long-barrelled firearm. Police managed to seize the gun but Nibbs stabbed himself with the knife. He was hospitalised and left in a critical condition, and charged with his wife’s murder following his recovery.

In court Nibbs claimed he had been acting in self-defence and that he thought the mother of his two children was “a snake,” but a jury found him guilty of murder and of showing no signs of mental illness.

Nibbs also claimed to have only “tapped” Judith on the head with the iron bar to get her attention, though the judge dismissed this statement by acknowledging that Judith’s tooth had been knocked out and swallowed with the root still attached during the attack.

The crane driver said he only meant to “slap [Judith] around a bit” and not kill her when he confronted her with information about money leaving their joint bank account, which he had said was “proof” of his wife’s infidelity. He said it was after she was dead that he cut her head off in anger at her because she had “betrayed” him.

The couple’s relationship is understood to have broken down in 2014 when Nibbs suspected his wife of having affairs. He enlisted his son Kirk to search Judith’s computer and found videos of her blowing kisses, sexually explicit pictures and Skype messages exchanged with other people.

Judith had confided in her sister and colleague at Meals on Wheels that her husband had threatened to kill her and grabbed her by the throat. Following an argument on 7 April she had said upon leaving work: “If I’m not in on Friday, I might be dead.”

Additional reporting by PA