Shed death judge’s lover denies changing story
The lover of a judge who died in a fire that engulfed his garden shed denied today that she changed her story to fit her theory of how he died.
Kerry Sparrow had told police that Andrew Chubb, 58, told her in a phone call on the day of his death that he was on the roof of a crown court building thinking of harming himself. But in a subsequent statement she left this out.
Ms Sparrow, 38, a former legal executive, had a two-year affair with the judge. She told an inquest yesterday that she did not believe his death at his country home in Westvale near Chard, Somerset in 2001, was an accident or suicide.
Mr Chubb, 58, died less than an hour after arguing with his wife, Jennifer, over his request to end their 34-year marriage.
Mrs Chubb has said she was in the house at the time of the accident, and that he had wanted to end his affair with Ms Sparrow, who Mrs Chubb alleges was trying to blackmail him.
Today, at the second inquest, which Ms Sparrow had sought for five years, Ms Sparrow again denied the judge had ever used the words “harm myself”, even though they were contained in a statement she read out yesterday.
“No he didn’t say that. He said, ‘I might as well jump off the roof than face her [his wife],’” she told the inquest in Glastonbury, Somerset. “He said it in a jokey manner. I suppose I was thinking he was going to harm himself.”
Ms Sparrow denied changing her version of events because it did not fit her theory of how he died, but said the phone call had been misinterpreted because it was a joke.
Ms Sparrow today told the hearing that her lover would not have killed himself and was more “distressed than depressed” about his loveless marriage with a wife he “loathed”.
Asked how she felt after learning he was dead, she wept, saying: “I was inconsolable, just devastated.
“I absolutely loved him,” she said, before breaking down in tears.
Mrs Chubb, a community nurse and Red Cross volunteer, inherited her husband’s 1m estate.
She now lives in Australia and has refused to attend the inquest, but in a statement read out today said she was “appalled” when her husband told her he wanted to end their marriage.
“He said I think we should get a divorce and I was astonished. I said ‘You can’t really mean this. This will break up the family’.”
Mrs Chubb wrote that she warned him of financial implications, but he said she would be “well provided for”.
She wrote that he then walked out into the garden, and when she went to confront him about 30 minutes later she found him in the shed repairing a lawnmower.
“I said you can’t just come home and say you’re getting a divorce,” she wrote. Her last words to him were: “I thought you were a good and honourable man, but that doesn’t seem to be the case any more.”
Mrs Chubb told police that around 8.50pm she heard a “tremendous explosion” and saw the shed engulfed in flames.
Mrs Chubb wrote that he had told her about the affair a month beforehand. “He told me he was having a sexual relationship with this woman and he had been trying to end it and that he said she was ’sort of blackmailing me and I’ve given her money. She is threatening to go to the press’,” the statement read.
An initial inquest concluded that the judge’s death was an accident. But Ms Sparrow campaigned for a second hearing, insisting the first was flawed.
