A dad has revealed how he heard bloodcurdling screams while on the phone to his wife and panicked because his children were in bed upstairs
Hearing his wife scream in the background while they were on the phone, Dan Cross immediately rang emergency services to tell them she was being attacked.
Dan was on a business trip in Hull, while his wife was holding the fort at home with their children in Hertfordshire. But it was too late to save her and when a police officer told him his wife had been brutally killed, he fell onto him sobbing his heart out.
It had started out like any other day. Earlier that evening Dan received a call from his wife, Nicola who was looking after the kids who were off from nursery and school and weren’t feeling well.
His wife had noticed a strange man banging on her front door trying to get in and called the police, who arrived and searched him, but didn’t find a reason to arrest him.
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Just 30 minutes later on September 14 2015, Nicola called Dan to tell him what was going on. Speaking to podcaster James English, Dan recalled: “The first thing she said was ‘There’s been a bloke hanging around outside the house earlier, and don’t get cross with me but I called the police’.”
Dan assured her she had done the right thing, while Nicola explained she could hear him banging on her front door again. She said: “I’m a little bit worried, because I can hear banging again …I think he’s got the hump because I phoned the police on him and he’s going to have a go at me or something.”
Then Nicola heard a loud crash from downstairs and went to investigate, still on the phone to her husband. “I heard Nikki actually say ‘What do you want? Get out of my house,'” Dan recalled. “I knew someone was in there.”
Within moments her words turned into blood-curdling screams. Then he heard heartbreaking words from his children. “I heard my children crying, saying ‘wake up mummy’ he told SAS: Who Dares Wins viewers. Dan was unable to help as he was over three hours away so he desperately called 999, begging for help.
Eventually, officers were sent to their home in Hemel Hempstead and a police officer was also sent to Dan’s hotel. “I think deep down I knew something really awful had happened because of the nature of the screams,” Dan said. “I kind of assumed that Nikki was probably dead, and I thought the kids were probably next,” he explained.
All Dan could do was wait, a second police officer then arrived at his hotel and assured him his children were safe, but added that they were still waiting to hear about his wife.
Dan recalled: “Then she went away again, and when she came back she said ‘Mr Cross, I’m sorry to tell you your wife has died.’ I just fell onto this copper, this big bloke and he was just hugging me and i was just sobbing my heart out.”
Nicola had been stabbed ten times by Polish car mechanic Marcin Porczynski, who lived in the neighbourhood. Her children, six and three years old at the time, lay upstairs in their bed as the horrific attack took place after he gained entry by throwing a plant pot in a window.
After his brutal attack, he then tried to leave her Hemel Hempstead house with Dan and Nicola’s two children, leaving a bloodstained knife on an elf on the kids’ bedside tables. Fortunately, he was apprehended before getting anywhere, but it was too late for Nicola who had died from her injuries.
Porczynski was charged with murder, two counts of kidnap, burglary of a neighbour’s house and aggravated burglary involving a weapon of offence. It emerged during the police investigation that he had paranoid schizophrenia and had been hearing voices telling him to save children who were being starved.
He pleaded not guilty to the five counts but guilty to manslaughter with diminished responsibility. Dan says he came face to face with his wife’s killer and that “he didn’t look evil. He just looked like a lost soul.”
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