The Galashiels man who stabbed his estranged wife to death at her home in Hemel Hempstead was last week jailed for life for her murder.
At St Albans Crown Court, Judge Stephen Gullick sentenced Miroslav Wosik, 42, to a minimum of 18 years in jail after he was convicted of killing Bernadeta Jakubszyk, 30, on May 28 last year.
The jury had heard how Wosik’s son Daniel, 18, had found his stepmother dead on her bed and his father sitting beside her.
Bernadeta died from two deep stab wounds which had punctured her right lung. Daniel said his father told him: “Call the police, let them arrest me.”
The couple’s two daughters, aged eight and six, were asleep in the house in The Wye, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, at the time of the killing.
The court was told Wosik had travelled south from his home in Galashiels to visit his family. He had moved out of the family home weeks earlier when the marriage hit difficulties.
Wosik and Bernadeta, who was also Polish, had been together for some eight years and had moved to England in search of a “good life” and set up home in Hemel Hempstead.
But by March of last year, Wosik had left the family home and moved to Galashiels, where he found accommodation in Beech Avenue and a job in a local machine factory.
In the weeks that followed, he made two trips south to see his family before the final one on May 26 last year.
Prosecutor Ann Evans had told the jury that by the time of her death, Bernadeta was getting her life back together and meeting up with Polish friends.
“This was obviously too much for the defendant to bear and he took the ultimate revenge on her,” she said.