This is the chilling 999 call a husband made confessing ‘I think I’ve just killed my wife’ after stabbing her 171 times when she decided to end their marriage.
In the 20 minute call, Mihai Hurmuz-Irimia can be heard saying he isn’t a ‘danger to anyone, except my wife’ after brutally murdering Katie Hurmuz-Irimia, 40, at their home in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.
The 29-year-old killer claimed to call handlers that he had he ‘blacked out’ and his ‘head was like “boom”‘ as he ‘stabbed her, all over the place’.
But it was alleged in court that after killing Katie, he showered and watched television before ‘calmly’ making the call to report what he had done.
Despite denying murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility, he was found guilty following a seven-day trial at Oxford Crown Court and now faces life imprisonment.
It emerged Hurmuz-Irimia had taken two grams of cocaine on the night of the attack, just days after the couple had returned from a trip to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary.
Mihai Hurmuz-Irimia, 29, (pictured) ‘calmly’ called the police after murdering his wife
Katie Hurmuz-Irimia, 40, (pictured) just days she accused her husband of ‘ruining’ their holiday to Bournemouth
The court heard that the couple had returned from a trip to Bournemouth, which turned out to be a shambles after Hurmuz-Irimia ‘ruined’ their holiday with his drunken behaviour.
It was then that she told him their marriage was ‘well and truly over’.
A few days later, on August 30 last year, Hurmuz-Irimia launched the frenzied attack that left his wife with 171 stab wounds – so catastrophic that they were unsurvivable.
The court heard that there were so many wounds that, in places, pathologist Dr Charlotte Randall was only able to estimate the wounds in a particular area of the body.
Pictures of the flat were presented to the jury showing their home left in a blood-splattered mess.
While the victim’s body had been obscured in the photographs, large pools of blood on the floor around her were still clearly visible.
There was extensive bloodstaining in the bedroom, where the attack began, and in the hallway where her body was found face-down on the ground.
Other bloodstaining evidence suggested that her husband had walked into the living room following the attack, sat down on the sofa and used the TV remote.
It is believed that after the murder, he took a shower, leaving his heavily bloodstained boxer shorts on the bathroom floor.
The jury were also played the 20-minute recording Hurmuz-Irimia had made to emergency services in which he told them: ‘ Hello, I think I’ve killed my wife.’
In the 20 minute recording, which was released by police after being played to the jury, he said ‘I stabbed her – all over the place.’
He then tells the operator: ‘I need to be locked up. I’m crazy. My head told me to do something. I done it.’
He later adds: ‘I told you my brain is wrong. There’s a lot of blood in the hallway. Can’t even look at it.’
‘I just like blacked out. Like my head was like ‘boom’.’
When asked to reassure the handler he won’t be a danger to police or himself when they arrive, he responds: ‘I’m not a danger to anyone.
‘Well, I am obviously to my wife but…’
Mihai Hurmuz-Irimia, 29, (pictured) denied murder on the basis of diminished responsibility
The couple, who met 10 years earlier on a night out in Reading, had spent the Bank Holiday weekend celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary at a hotel in Bournemouth.
But after Mihai, who a couple of years earlier was arrested on suspicion of threatening his wife with weapons, spent the Saturday night getting drunk in the hotel bar with off-duty members of staff, his wife sent a series of frustrated messages.
She told him, bluntly: ‘As far as I’m concerned we are over. This is meant to be our family holiday not you drinking with the staff.’
The couple, however, seemed to be on better terms the following day, during which period they sent ‘loving’ messages on their return to Wallingford on the Monday afternoon, when both attended a barbecue at Katie’s mother’s home.
Later that evening, Hurmuz-Irimia twice took the couple’s dog out for a walk, during which period he was said to have bought cocaine, later taking two grams of the Class A drug.
The defendant, who denied murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility, showed no emotion when the jury returned its verdict on 25 July after just three and a half hours of deliberations.
Hurmuz-Irimia claimed he had been suffering from an emotionally unstable personality disorder
In his closing speech to the jury on Monday, prosecutor John Price KC suggested the motive for the killing was ‘easy to find’.
He suggested the defendant was ‘resentful’ of attempts by his wife to make him stop drinking.
Police and paramedics at the scene of the couples Oxfordshire home in August last year
A forensics officer seen at the couple’s Wallingford home after Katie was murdered
Mr Price said: ‘This was a killing of a woman for which this defendant was fully responsible and he has tried to conceal that responsibility by lying or by refusing to state was really happened.
‘This killing, we submit, was undoubtedly murder. And that is the verdict we would [ask] you to return.’
Following his guilty verdict, Detective Chief Inspector Jon Capps, of Thames Valley Police’s Major Crime Unit, said that Hurmuz-Irimia had shown ‘horrific levels of violence’.
He said: ‘After killing Katie we believe he showered and watched some television before calmly calling the police to report what he had done.
‘The call to the police was all about him; a self-serving attempt to gain sympathy and portray himself in a better light. He subsequently gave no account in his police interview or at trial, leaving Katie’s family searching for answers.
‘Katie was a much-loved mum, daughter, sister, aunty and friend who was well liked in the community in which she lived.
‘Her family are still coming to terms with what happened. They have sat through the trial to be there for Katie but in doing so have heard days of distressing evidence which no family should have to experience.’
He is set to be sentenced at Oxford Crown Court on Thursday, June 27.
Remanding him in custody, Judge Ian Pringle KC said: ‘The sentence will be one of life imprisonment but I need to set a term, a minimum term, which you need to serve before being eligible to apply for parole.’
