A Hoxton pensioner has been convicted of murdering his partner after he admitted decapitating her and trying to flush her head down a toilet.

Dempsey Nibbs, 69, of the Charles estate, had denied murder but was today found guilty by a jury.

Meals on wheels worker Judith – who he suspected of cheating on him and transferring his money to other men – may still have been alive when he severed her head, the court was told during the two-week trial. Nibbs told jurors his partner had “looked dead to me”.

He said Judith, who was employed by Hackney Council, had “betrayed” him and that, having killed her accidentally, he cut off her head as “back in the day you cut the head off a traitor”.

The couple’s son Kirk was called to testify against his father, who faces life behind bars when he is sentenced. Kirk said he was “really shocked” by the discovery his mother, 60, had been sleeping with other men when he looked through her computer at his father’s behest.

The pair were not married but Judith had taken Nibbs’s surname.

He will be sentenced at a later date.

Giving evidence last week, Nibbs said he had confronted Judith in the living room of their home on April 10, 2014.

He had intended to “slap her about a bit” but said he did not intend to kill her.

After striking her with a padded bar and shoving it in her mouth he saw her eyes roll back in her head and thought she was dead.

“I was upset,” he said. “I started to call her every name under the sun – ‘you f****** traitor’, ‘you f****** snake, I’ll cut your head off’.”

His defence counsel Ian Henderson asked why he was saying these things.

“Back in the day you hanged murderers and cut the head off a traitor,” he explained. “She betrayed me.”

Nibbs then told the court he dragged her body out of the living room and into the hallway because he didn’t want the room “to be a mess”.

After placing her on a tarpaulin bag he used a knife from the kitchen to cut her head off, intending to flush it down the toilet. “It [the toilet] wasn’t big enough, obviously, that’s why I had to smash it up,” he continued.

Nibbs said he struck her head once with a hammer and flushed it before cleaning up the living room.

He then explained how he tried to shoot himself.

“I was trapped and there was no way out other than a bullet to my head,” he said.