THE Court of Appeal has refused to increase the sentence of a Cwmbran pensioner jailed for strangling his wife to death days into the first UK lockdown. Anthony Williams told police he “literally choked the living daylights” out of his wife Ruth, 67, at their Torfaen home on the morning of March 28 last year, after he “snapped” following a period of feeling depressed and anxious. Williams, 70, was jailed for five years in February after he was cleared of murder by a jury but had previously admitted manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. During the sentencing at Swansea Crown Court, Judge Paul Thomas said it was a “tragic case on several levels” and that Williams’s mental state was “severely affected at the time”.