I’m not a great TV watcher. I’m usually first to rise and watch the news while downing my first coffee or two. Other than that, my viewing is largely confined to times when my better half goes shopping (a not infrequent occurrence).

Then, unless there is a documentary that interests me I tend to watch crime fiction, Murder She Wrote, Poirot, A Touch of Frost, etc. If none of those are on I start to trawl other channels though it does amaze me how with four BBC channels, four ITV, plus channels four and five, the ten main UK channels can all so frequently simultaneously broadcast nothing that interests me whatsoever.

It was thus that I found myself watching CBS Reality one day last month and saw a programme about a murder which, had it been fiction, you would have tended to dismiss the plot as ridiculous. The perpetrator was a US Air Force employee whose time was split between duties at a base in California and another base in Las Vegas. His wife was found dead in bed, her face pressed up against a black plastic sack containing clothes and the first assumption was that she had suffocated and the death was natural causes. However, tests began to tell a different story.

A volunteer had her head pressed into a plastic sack containing a pillow. Six tests were conducted, each one with a greater pressure applied. After the sixth, she said she could not take any more but that was enough. Forensics showed that the sixth test matched the marks and skin oils on the sack against the murder victim’s face, proving that substantial pressure had been applied to her.

When the case came to trial, a pathologist who was to act as a defence witness went over to the prosecution. By chance, he had recently done an autopsy on a man who was killed when his car jack gave way. The car falling on him did not kill him instantly but quite quickly as the pressure on him prevented him from breathing. The pathologist found his lungs had bled internally and his examination of the murder victim showed identical symptoms. The husband was sentenced to life without parole.

But where this story (or perhaps I should say the murderer) starts to get silly is that within three or four days of his wife’s death he came from Las Vegas to his California home with a new bride. Investigation showed that invitations to that wedding were sent out before the first wife’s death.

Another bit of craziness concerned his phone bill which his wife always used to pay. In the last couple of weeks before her death he had begun to phone his second wife-to-be in Las Vegas from the home phone, knowing that his first wife would be dead by the time the bill came in. Turning up with a new bride so soon after the death of the first one wasn’t too clever either.

If I had seen this in a work of fiction I would have dismissed it as ridiculous but it just goes to prove that truth is stranger than fiction.