Law Classmate: I Learned My Lover Was Married When I Read of His Wife's Murder in the Legal News
Testifying in a law school classmate’s murder trial, a former Sidley Austin attorney told the court yesterday she had no idea he was married until she read in a legal trade publication that he had been charged with his wife’s murder.
Richard Davies Jones, 31, is accused of stabbing his wife, Laura, to death with a kitchen knife in December after she discovered he’d been having a four-year affair with Kendra James-Booth, now 28. He says he killed his wife in self-defense when she attacked him over the adultery, the Daily Mail reports.
Meanwhile, James-Booth, who is married, told the jury in the Guildford Crown Court case that he represented himself to her as single but knew she would never leave her husband, who travels a lot for his job.
The two met in 2006 at Guildford College of Law, then continued an affair after both found work as lawyers in London. Davies Jones was at Berwin Leighton Paisner; she was at Sidley Austin, but has since moved on and now serves as legal counsel to the organizer of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
