THE jury in the trial of a Suffolk man accused of murdering his wife, was due to continue its deliberations today .The jury at Ipswich Crown Court retired yesterday and was sent home at teatime after failing to reach a verdict.

THE jury in the trial of a Suffolk man accused of murdering his wife, was due to continue its deliberations today .

The jury at Ipswich Crown Court retired yesterday and was sent home at teatime after failing to reach a verdict.

Before the court is Colin Dorey, 43, of Bedell Close, Bury St Edmunds, who has denied murdering his wife Christine Dorey on January 3 this year.

He has admitted manslaughter but this plea has not been accepted by the prosecution.

It has been alleged during the weeklong trial that Dorey hit his wife at least ten times over the head with a hammer he had bought earlier that day from B&Q.

Dorey had dialled 999 shortly afterwards and had admitted to police he had killed his wife. He had later made another call saying he wished to hand himself in to the police.

Officers who went to the family home found Mrs Dorey's lifeless body under a bloodstained blanket in the lounge and the couple's three children asleep upstairs.

During the trial the court heard that Mrs Dorey had an affair during the early years of the couple's marriage and had a child by another man.

Dorey had brought that child up as his own and he and his wife had gone on to have two more children.

During the months before Mrs Dorey's death, her husband had suspected she was having another affair with a man called Andrew Dell.

On the night of her death Mrs Dorey had allegedly told her husband it had been a terrible mistake getting back with him 10 years earlier and that if her new boyfriend was single, she would have gone off with him at the drop of a hat.

Dorey told police he had flipped and could not remember hitting his wife.

Two psychiatrists told the court that Dorey had been suffering from a depressive illness at the time of his wife's death.

In his closing speech to the jury, Nigel Peters QC, told the jury that Dorey had known exactly what he was doing when he killed his wife and that made murder the proper verdict.

Graham Parkins QC, for Dorey, said that his client had admitted manslaughter and would not escape justice for killing his wife. "He isn't going to walk away from this a free man," he said.

Summing up the case for the jury Judge John Devaux said: "On any view this is a tragic case."

However, he told the jury that sympathy should not play any part in their deliberations.