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The Major, his wife and his lover

Christine Dryland used her car as a deadly weapon
By David Cocksedge

THIS CASE IS UNIQUE in British legal history. It was the first time a soldier's wife was tried for murder by a military tribunal - a court martial. No British civilian has faced such an ordeal before or since. In keeping with services policy, because the defendant, Mrs. Christine Dryland was a woman, there was a female majority on the seven-strong panel of officers and civilians; what in a civilian court would be called a jury.

Tony and Christine Dryland were a typical military couple. Tony had joined the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) at the age of sixteen as a boy soldier and made the British army his career. He had served five years when he met Christine Caine (then 17), the only daughter of Warrant Officer Michael Caine (NOT the actor!) who had been Tony Dryland's boxing coach. The couple were married on 4 February 1967 and stayed together as Major Dryland (as he became) was moved from posting to posting more than a dozen times.

By 1990, they had two children, Robert (aged 16) and James (3) when they moved from Paderborn to Soltau, near Hanover, Germany where Major Dryland served as part of the Rhineland Army. It was in August that year that he first met Marika Sparfeldt, aged 34. Tony Dryland was an expert horseman, owning two magnificent black Hanoverian horses which required expensive stabling. Marika Sparfeldt was a riding instructor at the stables and an equestrian journalist. Before long their mutual love of riding had developed into a strong friendship, and inevitably they became lovers.

Their affair was interrupted by the advent of the conflict in the Persian Gulf, and throughout Operation 'Desert Storm' Dryland served with the REME corps attached to the Seventh Armoured Brigade in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. During this time Major Dryland sent no less than 47 passionate letters to Marika and made what became a fatal decision. On his return from the Gulf, Tony Dryland announced his intention to divorce his wife of 24 years and marry Ms Sparfeldt.

Christine Dryland seemed to take the news with stoicism and sad resignation. She even offered to clear the path for her husband by taking their sons to stay with her parents in Australia while the divorce was finalized. Meantime Marika Sparfeldt moved out of the apartment she had shared for five years with her German partner Joachim Oetjens.

But Christine soon came to resent her self-sacrifice, and developed a bitter hatred for both her husband and his lover. Over the following weeks she appeared at the stables where her rival worked, and bitterly abused her. There were several fierce and embarrassing verbal exchanges between the two women.

This acrimony culminated in tragedy on 27 July 1991, Major Dryland's 46th birthday. He decided to spend the day with Marika at the riding club. Christine brooded on this indignity over a bottle of whiskey, getting steadily drunk. In the late afternoon that day she climbed behind the wheel of her green Saab 9000 car and drove the short distance to the stables. As she reached the car park, she accelerated, and rammed her husband's Mercedes. The loud crash brought witnesses running from all directions. When Major Dryland and his lover ran out of the clubhouse to see what was happening, Christine deliberately aimed the Saab at her hated rival and put her foot down hard on the gas.

The car struck Marika's legs, throwing her over the bonnet, and she smashed her head on the windscreen before falling to the concrete. When he tried to help his lover to the safety of two horseboxes, Major Dryland was also struck by the Saab and thrown hard onto the bonnet. Mrs. Dryland stopped, and then deliberately reversed her vehicle over Ms Sparfeldt's injured body. When she stopped again, witnesses surrounded the car and managed to restrain her. Marika Sparfeldt was alive when she reached hospital but died hours later from massive internal injuries.

Christine Dryland was arrested and taken into custody of the military police at Falling Bostel Barracks, where she remained for six months awaiting trial. To the charge of murdering Fraulein Sparfeldt, Mrs. Dryland tearfully pleaded not guilty, adding "Guilty of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility." The Tribunal accepted this after Mrs. Dryland was reminded that by entering such a plea she was accepting that she either intended to kill her victim or cause serious injury.

When the hearing was reconvened on 27 February 1992, the Judge Advocate reminded the panel that, consistent with Mrs. Dryland's plea, the only evidence they would be hearing was medical testimony in mitigation of sentence. Dr Paul Bowden, a psychiatrist attached to the Maudsley Hospital in London, described the fragile state of Mrs. Dryland's mental health and listed her three serious attacks of depression. The first had been over a surgical operation in 1970. Then in 1974 she became suicidal over her husband's affair with another woman and tried to end her life with an overdose of sleeping pills. She became severely depressed again in 1990 when she was faced with the evidence of her husband's affair with Fraulein Sparfeldt. On the fateful day, she had been drinking heavily and her depression turned to murderous rage until she became bent on revenge.

The joint professional opinion of both Dr Bowden and Lt. Col. Coogan, a psychiatrist with the Royal Army Medical Corps, was that Mrs. Dryland should "receive psychiatric treatment in a hospital for a substantial period". They further emphasized that she was not in any way a danger to society.

Summing up for Mrs. Dryland, Ann Curnow QC described the case as "a tragic one in which everyone concerned has already suffered enough". The military court agreed and reflected this in a compassionate sentence. Christine could have faced a maximum of life imprisonment, but instead was ordered to undergo up to twelve months' psychiatric treatment in a London hospital, concurrent with a one-year Rhineland Army probation order.

Fraulein Sparfeldt's family, however, felt that Christine Dryland had got off very lightly. In deliberately reversing her car over Marika as she lay helpless on the ground, the Sparfeldts' reckoned that Mrs. Dryland had shown a clear intention to kill. Attorneys for the family felt that, whatever her mental state, Mrs. Dryland should have served some time in custody for such a brutal act. There was also some local resentment that although a German citizen had been killed on German soil, British Army top brass had conspired with federal authorities to ensure that this tragic case was dealt with as an internal military matter.

(Research: 'Christine Dryland; the Major's wife' by Brian Lane, Asia Books).

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