A penniless man who married a wealthy widow and enjoyed the high life in Zimbabwe staged her murder to look like suicide, a jury at Manchester Crown Court was told on Tuesday.

Michael Bamforth, 50, persuaded Ivy Sutcliffe, 61, to sell her substantial property and move with him from Littleborough, in Greater Manchester, to a suburb of Harare. There they lived the “typical expatriate life” of an earlier era spending long days on the golf course and employing several servants.

But life was far from idyllic, the prosecution suggested. Each drank heavily both at home and with friends at the Wingate Golf Club and City Bowling Club.

Mr Bamforth became aggressive and domineering while drinking, and would fire a small Browning-type pistol around the house, jurors heard.

They were told he became violent towards his older lover, notably when he appeared intent on getting his hands on her money, even threatening to kill her.

On August 2 2004 Mr Bamforth’s neighbour Stuart Hargreaves, the principal director of veterinary services for Zimbabwe, was getting ready for bed when he heard a pistol shot from next door.

Mr Bamforth phoned Mr Hargreaves shortly after to say Mrs Sutcliffe had shot herself.

He and his wife rushed around to find Mrs Sutcliffe slumped at one end of the settee in the sitting room with a single wound to the right side of her head.

Alistair Webster, QC, opening for the prosecution, told the jury: “The case which you are about to hear has many of the trappings of a novel: a wealthy expatriate lifestyle in Africa; a woman with money killed by a single shot to the head from a small pistol and an exotic location.

“But the facts of the case do not come out of a novel. This is real life, sadly real death, a story of a woman murdered by her husband of four months, the murder being staged to look like suicide. Here was a real victim and a real tragedy.”

The court was told that Mrs Sutcliffe, who had three daughters, had enjoyed a happy marriage to a wealthy haulage company proprietor. He died in 1996 leaving her with £180,000 in cash, a large house and an apartment in Spain. By then Mrs Sutcliffe had begun an affair with Mr Bamford.

The couple sold up to move to Zimbabwe where they lived, according to Mr Webster, “what many of us might think to be a typical expatriate life from decades ago”.

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