LONDON -- The wealthy Englishman accused in the 'headless corpse' murder case was humiliated by his beautiful American wife who taunted him about her sexual escapades with both men and women, a witness testified Tuesday.
'I'm AC-DC. I go with anyone,' Monika Telling was quoted as saying to their neighbor Richard Richardson, who testified on the second day of Michael Telling's murder trial.
Richardson said Mrs. Telling, whose headless body was found dumped in underbrush last September, had delighted in taunting her 34-year-old husband, second cousin to multimillionaire Lord Vestey.
Telling has pleaded guilty to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility but denies the murder charge.
The trial in Exeter, 170 miles west of London, has been splashed across London's tabloids with grisly headlines such as 'Why I chopped off my wife's head' and 'I loved her, but I shot her.'
'All she ever wanted was money,' Richardson told the court Tuesday. He said Telling was 'very much frightened' of his strikingly beautiful wife from California.
Monika Elizabeth Zumsteg-Telling, 27, met Telling on one of his frequent jet hops to the United States. For 17 months they led a life of fast cars, exotic vacations and lavish parties.
But the prosecution charged that in March 1983 Telling shot her three times, stored the body in his unfinished sauna and then left her headless corpse near Exeter. He kept the head in his garage, according to the prosecution.
Richardson said Telling generally tolerated his wife's erratic behavior. Telling had reported discovering his wife in a compromising position with another woman in his living room.
'I wanted to take Michael into the garden and knock some sense into him and tell him not to take it,' Richardson said. 'He used to lift her hand up and kiss it and kiss the top of her head. That used to rile me.'
A woman Telling met in a CB radio conversation said they had had a four-week affair starting in April 1983 in which he talked of his broken marriage but spoke as if his wife was still alive.
'He tried to make love to me but he failed,' Linda Dawn Blackstock said. 'I think he felt humiliated. He tried more than once but we never had sex fully.'
According to the confession Telling made to police, the decomposing remains of his wife were behind the house in the partially built sauna at the time he was trying to make love to Mrs. Blackstock.
