Painter and decorater Peter Balcombe was today found guilty of murdering his wife Eunice at their home in Pewsey just before Christmas last year.

During his seven day trial the seventeen stone darts enthusiast claimed he had not not intended to kill his wife but wanted to make her say sorry for telling him he was sexually inadequate.

He denied murdering his wife Eunice at their Stratton Road home in Pewsey on December 21 last year but the jury of eight men and four women took just ? hours to find him guilty or murder. The defence had asked them to return a verdict of manslaughter but they dismissed this idea after hearing how the violent bully had strangled his wife and then made a cup of tea.

He claimed he had been driven to putting his hands around her neck after she taunted him about his lack of sexual prowess and how he feared she was having an affair with a young Latvian.

In a taped interview with police he said: "So I grabbed her, loving her to bits, and we fell down."

"I squeezed and I squeezed, I can't tell you what the pressure was," said Balcombe, "I was crying and I wanted her to say sorry and that was it."

He told the officers that his wife was choking and trying to breathe.

"She fell backwards between the computer room and the archway into the living room. "She was accusing me of being inadequate, it was sexual. She was trying to blame it on me."

Asked why he had grabbed hold of his wife, he said: "I wanted her to wake up to the reality we had problems."

But the jury did not accept this version of events after hearing of his violence from his first wife Elizabeth and a daughter from another relationship.

On Monday the jury had heard about text messages exchanged between Eunice and her Latvian friend Vladimir Platach, 21. The court heard that between September and November he sent her 279 text messages as well as phone calls.

Mrs Balcombe sent him 131 messages and phoned him on 25 occasions.

Extracts read out in court included: Mr Platach: "I miss you and want you in my bed, I would cuddle you all night."

Mrs Balcombe: "I miss you with a passion."

Mr Platach: "I just want to look at you all day."

But the jury decided this was not good enough reason for Balcombe to lose his temper and strangle his wife to death.

In the first week of the trial his step daughter Mubai Romony told the jury Balcombe was a Jekyl land Hyde character who would ne nice one moment and violent the next.

Balcombe's first wife, Elizabeth, by whom he had two children, said that Balcombe had tried to strangle her. She stood by her evidence in chief that he had punched her, knocking her to the ground and then straddled her, trying to strangle her until she was able to grab a vase and threatened to hit him.

His daughter Christine Balcombe told the court her father had told her he intended to kill Eunice.

She said her father had confessed to having slept around with a younger girl.' Ms Balcombe said her father spoke of his concern that his wife might be having an affair with a 21-year-old Russian "He said she had been cheating on him with a 21-year-old."

He used bugging devices on their home phone and in his wife's car to track down the Russian and, the court heard, tell him that Mrs Balcombe was 40 years old and a mother of three and not 26 as she had allegedly told him.

On the night before Eunice Balcombe was found dead her husband said he was going to kill her, her daughter said.

Balcombe will be sentence later to day. He will face life imprisonment - the only possible sentence for murder but the judge will decide the tariff.