Wife: I killed him for being Bossy

AN AUSTRALIAN woman who stabbed her partner to death because she was tired of being bossed around said an argument over Bruce Springsteen was the last straw.

Karen Lee Cooper pleaded guilty to manslaughter yesterday and was sentenced to eight years in prison for killing partner Kevin Watson in a drunken argument at their home in north-eastern Queensland in July 2006.

Cooper, 50, called an ambulance after suffering what her lawyer Greg Maguire called a “brain snap” and stabbing Watson, 49, once in the chest with a kitchen knife. He died at the scene.

Cooper told police she had become fed up with Waston telling her what to do during their two-year relationship. On the night of the killing, she tried to play a Springsteen CD and he took if off the stereo, triggering an argument.

“I mean, who the hell doesn’t like Bruce Springsteen, for God’s sake?” Cooper told police in a recorded interview.

“I just picked up a knife and I went ‘boom’.”

Cooper, who took painkillers after calling the ambulance in a suicide bid, regretted stabbing Watson and believed he did not deserve to die, Maguire said.

Justice John Byrne noted Cooper was a mother of three with no previous convictions, and said he was taking her remorse and guilty plea into account.