A British man residing in Italy has confessed to fatally stabbing his partner, claiming it occurred after she accused him of infidelity.

Michael Whitbread, 75, told the court he could not recall how many times he stabbed Michele Faiers, 66, a fellow Briton, in October 2023.

The couple had been living in a renovated cottage in Verratti, a secluded village in Abruzzo, when the incident took place, according to the Times.

Following the attack, Whitbread fled to the UK, but his daughter informed the police of his location after Faiers’s body was found. He was subsequently extradited to Italy to face trial.

In his initial statement on Friday, the former diving instructor from Torquay claimed that Faiers had accused him of having an affair for several months after she saw him pat a woman's bottom at a party in 2022.

Whitbread, who has denied cheating, told the courthouse in Lanciano that the couple would have violent arguments about the incident. “It was an odd clip round the head, then it got worse.”

He said that on the evening of 28 October 2023, Faiers woke him and started hitting him, saying: “I wish you were dead.”

Whitbread said he took a knife from the kitchen, gave it to her and said: “Kill me. I have had enough.”

“It was after ten months of being accused of something I did not do,” he continued.

“She kicked me in the intimate parts and was trying to push me down the stairs. I thought: she’s going to cut me. That is when I grabbed the knife in panic.”

Faiers was found by Italian police lying in bed with seven stab wounds to the back. “I stabbed her, I don’t remember how many times,” Whitbread told the court.

He claimed that Faiers’s behaviour before her death had led him to attempt suicide.

The court heard Whitbread had been married three times previously, with two of those marriages ending as a result of his affairs.

Faiers’s three adult daughters attended the hearing, consoling each other as Whitbread described how he killed their mother.

The daughters’ lawyer, Nadia Germana Tascona, said after the hearing: “It’s important he’s confessed; something he has never done. That was really important for Michele’s daughters because it is a way to begin again.”

The trial continues, with the judge having commissioned a psychological assessment of Whitbread.