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Lake woman had 'violent marriage' | |
(about 12 hours later) | |
A daughter of a woman whose body was found in a French lake has told a court about the rocky marriage her mother had prior to her death. | |
Robert Lund is alleged to have murdered his 52-year-old wife Evelyn and pushed her car into Lake Bancalie with her inside in 1999. He denies the charge. | |
Mrs Lund's youngest daughter, Victoria Taylor, told the court in Albi, France, the couple's relationship was violent. | |
She said she once saw Mr Lund, 55, hit her mother with a pan during a row. | |
Ms Taylor, 30, told the court that she moved out of home at the age of 16 to escape the fights. | |
'Cruel and manipulative' | |
The jury, sitting at the Cour d'Assises de Tarn in Albi, south west France, was told by Mrs Lund's sister, Elizabeth Camden, that the defendant was a "cruel and manipulative" man who was habitually rude to Mrs Lund's friends to drive them away and isolate her. | |
Evelyn Lund's body was discovered when lake water levels dropped | Evelyn Lund's body was discovered when lake water levels dropped |
Mrs Camden said: "I think the reason why he wanted to move to France was to take her away from her secure network she had with her children. | |
"We were all very close, and Robert was jealous of this, so he took her from her secure network and put her in the middle of nowhere." | |
Squandered money | |
Life insurance payments after the death of Mrs Lund's first husband Arthur Taylor, a building society manager, had left her well-off, Mrs Camden said. | |
By contrast, she added, Mr Lund had been living in a caravan when they met at a party in 1991, and after the couple moved to France he tried to persuade her to change her will. | |
The couple moved to France in 1997 | The couple moved to France in 1997 |
The prosecution alleges Mr Lund, originally from Darwen in Lancashire, killed his wife and dumped her body and car in a lake to make it look like an accident so he could live off the insurance money at their farmhouse. | |
Her body was found in her car in Lake Bancalie in 2001, two years after she went missing from the house the couple shared in the village of Rayssac. | |
Earlier in the trial Mr Lund told the jury his wife had been a violent alcoholic who once attacked him with a kitchen knife. | |
The court had also heard that Mrs Lund had squandered the inheritance left by her wealthy first husband, and at the time of her death was so poor that she could not afford Christmas presents for her family. | |
The trial continues. | |
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