Pensioner who left dying wife to rot in chair ‘drowned out her screams with TV’

A husband left his terminally ill wife to die in squalid conditions, as maggots and flies riddled her body.

‘Disgraceful’ Richard Wallach, would drown out the screams of wife Valerie by turning up the volume on the TV, according to neighbours who described him as a ‘very nasty man’, the Liverpool Echo reported.

Valerie was suffering from breast cancer and succumbed to her illness as well as multiple organ failure 19 days after being rescued by paramedics in August, 2017.

Emergency services who found the 62-year-old at her home in Toxteth, Liverpool, described it as the ‘worst condition of a living human they had ever seen’.

Valerie, who was married to Wallach for 15 years was left to suffer on her own and die in a faeces-soiled armchair.

Wallach was sentenced to eight years in jail earlier this month, after the jury found him guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence at Liverpool Crown Court.

The court was told that when medics informed him informed him that his wife would likely die that day, Wallach replied: ‘Thanks for letting me know, but who is going to sort out my problem?

‘I have been constipated for weeks.’

Neighbours told the Echo that Valerie would scream ‘help me! Help me!’ all day, and that Wallach would just ignore her.

One neighbour, who did not wish to be named, said: ‘I lived next door for nine years, and he was a nasty piece of work, in fact one of the most arrogant people I’ve ever come across in my life.

‘He was banging on my walls all hours of the night terrorising my children so they had to sleep in bed with me.

‘Him and his wife used to give each other hell, arguing constantly day and night so much, I had to keep my windows closed.

‘He was very nasty with a very bad attitude, he didn’t want anyone moving in next to him.’

Wallach, who is hard of hearing, would keep his own bedroom clean and tidy and even had a ‘smoking room’ where he would spend time away from his sick wife.

Emergency services had to wear protective clothing when entering the house, because of how filthy it was, with bags of rotting rubbish and mouldy food strewn across the floors.

Valerie’s body was also covered with ulcers which were categorised as ‘Grade 4’ pressure sores, said to be ‘of the worst kind’, which revealed deep tissue damage extending down to the bone.

Wallach was also incensed when the bereavement officer at the Royal Liverpool Hospital offered to pay

for a basic funeral package for his wife, and ‘became agitated that it did not include the provision of a car for him.’

At the conclusion of his Wallach’s trial last week, a judge branded him ‘thoroughly selfish’.