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Husband's 'physical and sexual violence' led to wife killing herself, court told
The Guardian
|February 25, 2026
A woman who took her own life after being subjected to a campaign of “physical and sexual violence” by her husband told her family: “I am so sorry but I just couldn’t take it any more”, a court heard yesterday.
Tarryn Baird, 34, was found dead at her home in Swindon, Wiltshire, on 28 November 2017.
Christopher Trybus, 43, is charged with his wife’s manslaughter as well as two counts of rape and coercive and controlling behaviour. He denies all the charges.
Opening the trial at Winchester crown court, prosecutors said Trybus’s behaviour towards Baird had escalated in the two years before her death and that he was alleged to have raped her twice in late 2016.
The jury was read some of Baird’s diary entries, in which she appeared to note a change in her relationship with Trybus, whom she married in 2009. The couple had moved to the UK from their native South Africa two years earlier.
One read: “One night, during sex, I felt his hands around my neck. Something was unleashed that night. Progressively, sex got rougher. The more I fight back, the more he enjoys it.” In her diary, Baird added that this was “a side” of her husband “that has been hidden all these years”.
This story is from the February 25, 2026 edition of The Guardian.
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