An elderly former actor has today admitted killing his seriously ill wife after struggling to cope with her terminal condition.

And after hearing the case against 71-year-old Stuart Mungall, of Hendham Road, Tooting, an Old Bailey judge said he would consider suspending any jail term.

Mr Mungall, who starred in Yorkie bar adverts in the 1970s, smothered 69-year-old Joan Mungall with a pillow at their home on December 3 last year.

His wife, a close friend of famous actress Jane Asher, was suffering from Pick's disease, a neuro-degenerative condition with similar symptoms to Alzheimer's.

Mungall was charged with murder but today admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

The plea was accepted by prosecutors after psychiatrists found he had been suffering from a "depressive episode" at the time.

The court heard Mungall, who also appeared in episodes of The Bill, Casualty and Dempsey and Makepeace and on stage during a successful career, phoned his brother, daughter and a close friend to admit what he had done.

When police were called to the couple's home, he said: "She's not in pain anymore. She was in such pain last night.

"Doctors say do this and that but they cannot make it better, so I made it better."

He also told a doctor: "I couldn't cope any more. I killed her. It's been four years now."

Mrs Mungall, herself a successful actress who had worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company, first suffered medical problems in 2008 when she developed epilepsy.

In June 2009, doctors discovered she was suffering from a degenerative brain condition - and by the autumn of last year she was housebound and effectively bed-ridden, and was almost entirely dependent on her husband.

Her worsening health caused the "devoted couple" to close the Patio garden centre business they had owned in Battersea and Tooting last year.

But prosecutor Mark Dennis QC said: "There is no suggestion that his wife wanted to end her life prematurely, nor had she encouraged the defendant to act as he did."

The day before she was found dead nurses found her "typically upbeat and in positive mood" during a home visit.

However, Mungall was "reluctant to accept outside help" and had failed to accept his wife would need palliative care at a local hospice, the court heard.

Mr Dennis added: "He developed a depressive illness which led him to snap on the morning of December."

He said: "This was a deliberate killing. It was not assisted suicide, nor did it even come close to that.

"There is no evidence she asked that morning to be killed or asked the day before to be killed.

"The most the defendant has said to either psychiatrist is that morning he looked in to her eyes and she gave a look that he took to mean he should do what he went on to do.

"He had chosen to do what he did. No doubt in his own mind doing what he thought in his state was best for him and for her.

"He has therefore cut short a life."

The Recorder of London, Judge Peter Beaumont QC, adjourned sentence until September so Mungall could be assessed by the Probation Service.

He said the 71 year-old's case posed a "very difficult sentencing exercise for the court".

Judge Beaumont said: "You took the law in to your own hands and yo took a life in doing so.

"Ordinarily people that do that are locked up. I am looking to see whether I can reconcile my undoubted public duty on the facts of this case, as clear as they are, and avoid locking you up - by examining all the circumstances of your particular case and seeing what has not been looked in to thus far can be looked in to in order to see what help the Probation Service can give you were I able to impose a suspended sentence."

He added: "I am not making any promises but I want to explore every avenue."

Judge Beaumont released Mungall, who was born in Forfar, Scotland, on conditional bail - directing a probation officer visit him at home and ordering Mungall to see a psychiatrist again for a further report.

Mr Dennis argued Mungall should be sent to prison. He said: "We do say that albeit the sentence would be at the shorter end, a custodial sentence is warranted when someone chooses to end the life of a person who has not asked for that."

Defence barrister Miranda Moore QC said that the actress Jane Asher had been a friend of Mrs Mungall for 40 years and had written to the court.

She said: "She speaks with some knowledge of neurological diseases as she is the President of Parkinsons UK.

"If anybody were to judge Stuart harshly it would be a lady who has been Joan's friend of 40 years and yet she doesn't.

"The friends don't, those that went to the funeral don't. Everybody wished that Stuart could be at the funeral."

The court heard that Jane Asher spoke at the funeral and said: "I am very sad to say that Stuart is not able to be here today, but I hope he knows his presence is very much felt."

Next-door neighbour Deborah Evans said that the Mungalls had at first been optimistic there would be a cure.

She said: "It was as things progressed that we became concerned that Stuart should probably be having some help. I don't think Joan was keen on anyone other than Stuart helping her. He said they had some help from social services but it didn't work out."

She said that before the killing she once saw Stuart sitting in his summer house with his head in his hands, weeping.

Miss Moore said: "What neither of them wanted and they almost resented, was people coming in and telling them how to do things.

"This wasn't somebody who set out to kill. This was someone who had his own personal responsibility diminished to such an extent that that day he killed the woman he loved."

She added that Mr Mungall had improved in his 88 days in custody at Belmarsh and said: "It was the kindness of the strangers that he met in prison, staff, chaplain and fellow prisoners who helped him get back on track."

Mungall will be sentenced on September 23.

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