HAUNTING new details have emerged in a chilling beheading case after a husband allegedly forced his wife to decapitate her lover.
Armando and Britany Barron, 33, were charged over the death of 25-year-old Jonathan Amerault in Manchester, New Hampshire, after his body was discovered in a swamp.
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Authorities claimed Armando murdered Amerault after finding out he was having affair with his wife, before making her saw his head off the body and bury it in the woods.
Mom-of-three Britany has denied she was the one who shot her co-worker Amerault, and has testified that both were brutally assaulted by her husband in the hours leading up to the death in September 2020.
The 33-year-old claimed at Armando’s first-degree murder trial that he choked and punched her and eventually put his gun into her mouth.
She testified that her husband told her “you know that you’re going to die tonight, right?” not long before the two left the house to go to the park where he allegedly used her phone to tell the co-worker to meet her there.
Armando had sent the couple’s three young children to go to their grandmother’s home next door.
“Don’t do anything stupid or the girls are going to walk into something gruesome,” Britany claims he said as they were leaving.
On the way to the park, he read the texts between Britany and Amerault aloud, striking her after finishing each one, she said.
Britany, who asked a prosecutor in the Keene courtroom to address her by her maiden name, Mitchell, also testified that just a week earlier, she had told Armando she no longer loved him and wanted a divorce.
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When he heard that, he grabbed her throat and started choking her, saying, “Are you serious?”.
She denied early in her testimony that she was the one who shot Amerault, as a defense lawyer alleged during opening statements Tuesday.
She pointed to her husband as the shooter.
Armando pleaded not guilty to killing Amerault but acknowledged in court Tuesday that he had struck Britany, broke her nose, attempted to strangle her, and kicked Amerault in the head.
Prosecutors allege that Armando used his wife’s cellphone to lure Amerault to the park the night he discovered the texts before beating and kicking Amerault and trying to force his wife to shoot him – which she refused to do.
He also forced her to stand on his neck and slit his wrists, they said.
Armando forced Amerault into the back of the victim’s car and told Britany to get into the driver’s seat, she testified.
There was a machete inside and Britany testified that Amerault told her to pick it up and kill her husband, but she said no.
DEADLY REVENGE
She said Armando eventually got into the car and shot Amerault three times, before making his wife drive back to their home in Jaffrey as he followed in their vehicle.
They then headed 200 miles north to a remote campsite, with Armando talking on the phone with her throughout the trip, she testified.
There, Armando allegedly forced her to cut off Amerault’s head and bury it and wrap the body in a tarp. He left her to dispose of the body and returned home, she testified.
“He said that we needed to cut off his head so that there would be no dental records of the body,” Britany testified, saying she used a saw brought from home.
She claimed that they both destroyed evidence.
The body was found by New Hampshire Fish and Game officers in a swamp after they found Britany at the campsite.
Britany told the court that she and Amerault got to know each other better while working on a project in the days leading to his death and communicated via texting and social media apps.
One afternoon, they drove to a nearby park after work and Britany testified she told him she “couldn’t offer anything more than friendship” before later giving him a quick kiss.
They shared one more kiss during a work break that week, a day before the texts were discovered.
Britany pleaded guilty last year to three counts of falsifying evidence and was released from jail on parole last month.
She apologized to Amerault’s family during her sentencing.
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