Royal Navy Wife Jailed For Knife Attack On Sailor Husband

A Royal Navy wife has been jailed for nine years after being found guilty of repeatedly stabbing her sailor husband.

Crystal and Simon Smith had returned to their Gosport home after a function for the crew of HMS Lancaster when she knifed him three times in the back.

During the 30-year-old's trial the court had heard how Mr Smith had been subjected to sustained domestic abuse which culminated with the stabbing on the night he finally decided to leave her. 

The pair had earlier attended the function in Southsea where a drunken Crystal Smith had publicly humiliated the Leading Seaman by accusing him of an affair.

On the taxi ride home, shared with two other couples, she'd rapped repeatedly at him chanting that she would 'make it rain with pain'.

On getting in the door of the house Crystal Smith flung a knife block at Simon Smith and punched him. Mr Smith at that point decided to leave.

Adressing Smith, Judge Sarah Munro QC said: "As he calmly packed his bag you armed yourself with the sharpest knife around."

"You crept up the stairs in stockinged feet and as his back was turned, stabbed him with glancing blows and one through the back of his arm through to the front, severing his arterial vessel and spurting vast quantities of blood all over him, and you, and down the stairs as he went to get help."

Leading Seaman Smith had to undergo several operations following the attack and has lost the feeling in his left arm.

Crystal Smith claimed to have no memory of the attack. A jury cleared her of attempted murder but found the former probation officer guilty of wounding with intent.

In a statement read out in court Simon Smith said: "I was the victim of sustained physical abuse from my wife Crystal over the six years we were together."

"Crystal was the only serious relationship I ever had. Because I had nothing to compare it with I simply accepted it as normal."

Mr Smith has since had to leave his post of the frigate HMS Lancaster, taking up a position at shore base HMS Collingwood so he can look after the couple's four-year-old daughter.