DAVID Kimber, who served four and a half years in prison after being found guilty of murder, could be freed next year after a jury decided the killing of his common law wife, Maria Vertannes, was manslaughter.

After a week-long trial last week the jury at Bristol Crown Court rejected the charge that Kimber murdered Miss Vertannes on March 5 1997 and his sentence was reduced to eight years.

Unemployed Kimber, 30, formerly shared a flat with Miss Vertannes in Eastleigh Road, Devizes. He admitted manslaughter on the grounds of provocation and diminished responsibility.

The former pupil of St John's School, Marlborough, had been serving a life sentence.

He has already served four and a half years since Miss Vertannes' death and with good behaviour he could now be released in ten months' time.

Kimber had previously stood trial twice for her murder. His original conviction for murder was quashed on appeal and a retrial was ordered. Then the trial jury failed to reach a verdict.

Last week the court was told the couple, who had been together since 1993, had split up in January 1997.

The following month Miss Vertannes, who was born and brought up in Swindon, returned to live in the flat in Eastleigh Road until custody of their baby daughter, Sarah-Jane, and Miss Vertannes' son, Daniel who was eight at the time, was determined.

The couple had been locked in a bitter custody battle and the day before Miss Vertannes, 26, was killed, the couple had been to a custody hearing at Devizes Magistrates' Court.

It was in the early hours of March 5 that she was fatally stabbed.

Kimber told the court last week they had been rowing and in a bid to stop the argument he got a knife from the kitchen and returned with it to the living room.

He said he lunged at Miss Vertannes with the knife in an effort to scare her and to stop the row, but he cut her wrist. She had said: "You have lost the kids."

He said he remembered stabbing her in the back after she had gone out into the hall. Kimber said Miss Vertannes then said to him: "You have definitely lost the kids," after which he said he could not remember anything else until she collapsed and died in the kitchen.

After the jury's verdict, Neil Ford QC, Kimber's defence counsel, told the court: "David Kimber is by nature a shy, retiring and essentially non violent man. He is in no sense a danger to the public."

Judge Mrs Justice Hallett, told Kimber: "I appreciate that life had become very difficult for you and Maria in the weeks before her death, and I appreciate that as a result you had become very unhappy.

"But what you had to put up with was no more than many, many people, sadly, all over the country have to put up with. You reacted by stabbing a woman eight times in the back and the children you say you love have now lost their mother.

"I shall of course be true to the jury's verdict but I do note that the provocation in this case was not the gravest kind.

"It came after you had fetched a knife and you had lunged at Maria cutting her. It was only then that she uttered the provoking words that you had lost the children and she was going to call the police."

Before passing sentence the judge said she had taken into account Kimber's remorse and his admission he had killed Miss Vertannes.

Miss Vertannes' mother, Georgina Wallace, said did not wish to comment on the verdict. She is bringing up Miss Vertannes' children in Oxfordshire. Kimber's parents, who live in Marlborough, regularly visit the children.

"After the verdict Detective Inspector Paul Jennings, who led the investigation into Miss Vertannes' death said: "I accept the findings of the court.

"There was no doubt it was a frenzied attack on Maria Vertannes. She would have experienced severe terror the moment Kimber came in with the knife.

"Maria's family have been terribly affected by her death. The children have effectively lost a mother and a father," he said. "David Kimber's family are also victims."

Experts' conflicting views

THE case against David Kimber hinged on the evidence of two experts.

Psychiatrists Dr Robert Reeves and Dr Ellen Wilkinson gave conflicting views of Kimber's state of mind at the time he killed Maria Vertannes on March 5 1997.

Dr Reeves, a defence witness, examined Kimber in prison seven months after Miss Vertannes was killed.

He believed that at the time of the killing, Kimber had become clinically depressed and had acted as he did because of diminished responsibility.

He said he was in an "abnormally controlled state of mind which would have substantially impaired his responsibility."

Dr Reeves, who works in Bristol, also believed the suicide notes Kimber wrote a week before Miss Vertannes was killed were genuine.

He said Kimber was a man who did not display his emotions and would rather walk away from rows.

Referring to the killing, he said: "He stored up all this anger unable to communicate his feelings and the violent outburst was when the dam burst."

Dr Wilkinson, a psychiatrist who examined Kimber for the prosecution, disagreed. She said: "He was suffering from the symptoms that are present in a depressive illness such as loss of sleep and weight loss but that could be explained by the circumstances in which he was living at the time.

"I think the suicide notes may have been an attempt to communicate how he was feeling. It suggests he did not want to act on the notes. It was a cry for help. I think he did feel distressed and desperate at that time. The suicide feelings were transient."