Christine Fensome, from Herefordshire, was on a dream trip to Mexico with her husband Andy Bennetts when she became ill 
 
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 A NEWLYWED bride died on her honeymoon from a heart attack believed to have been caused by eating fish. 
 
 Christine Fensome, 54, was on a dream trip to Mexico with her husband Andy Bennetts, 58, when she became ill during the night on September 27 - just 10 days after her wedding. 
 
 Facebook Chris Fensome, pictured with her new husband Andy Bennetts, died while they were on their honeymoon in Mexico 
 
 Facebook The 54-year-old became ill after eating fish while on the dream holiday 
 
 Her children have been told the evening before she died Chris ate fish, thought to have contained high levels of mercury, which may have led to her organs shutting down. 
 
 It is the second tragedy to hit the family after they lost their dad Craig in 2004, who was killed in a hit-and-run at the age of 41. 
 
 Her three children Brad, 33, Richard, 30 and Hayley, 29, say their mother struggled to get over the loss until meeting Andy seven years ago. 
 
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 They say Andy taught her to "love again" and the pair tied the knot on September 17 before jetting off on their honeymoon. 
 
 Her brother James Bowyer, 49, said the family had been told her fatal sudden illness had been caused by eating a grouper fish contaminated with a toxin from a plankton that is found on coral, algae and seaweed. 
 
 He said: "If anything can come from my sister's death it is raising awareness about eating fish abroad. Knowledge appears to be quite limited about ciguatera food poisoning but it can be a hidden killer. 
 
 "Due to global warming the toxin is becoming more prevalent and is found on algae on coral reefs in certain parts of the world - including the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 "The algae gets eaten by smaller fish and those fish get eaten by larger fish like groupers and barracudas. 
 
 "There are no known tests to detect it and there is no effective treatment for it. So there was nothing Christine could have really done. 
 
 Facebook Christine (right) was having the time of her life when she suddenly fell ill 
 
 "Restaurants over there tend to serve smaller fish as that means smaller the amount of potential toxins. 
 
 "Ciguatera poisonings are quite common but deaths are extremely rare. It can cause shooting pains in the chest and in my sisters' case it caused her to have a heart attack." 
 
 Daughter Hayley said: "Everyone says to me 'stay focused, stay strong, keep going for your mum and dad.' 
 
 "But it is hard. I used to cry to mum that my dad would not be able to walk me down the aisle and she would tell me that she would be there to walk me down the aisle. But now I haven't got anyone. 
 
 "She would talk to anyone. People met her once and fell in love with her. She would do anything for any of us. 
 
 "She loved her life for us. She tried so hard to be both mum and dad. We can't really grieve our mum as we don't know how [she died] or why." 
 
 Christine, from Burghill, Herefordshire, was described as being a "fit and active" regular gym-goer who doted on her five grandchildren. 
 
 Hayley said when their father died Christine had struggled to come to terms with the shock and became a recluse. 
 
 Facebook Christine took this photo while she was holidaying in Mexico 
 
 Facebook The couple were on their dream honeymoon in Mexico when she died 
 
 She added: "Our mum didn't come out of the house for five years. She couldn't get going. 
 
 "But she found her feet again slowly and found happiness at the end. 
 
 "She just looked beautiful [on her wedding day]. It was a lovely day and the sun was shining." 
 
 Son Richard said: "The fact she went from happy to dark times and finally got happiness again and then this. 
 
 "It is too much to take in. It is a major shock. Mum stuck us all together. She was the glue and now she has gone." 
 
 Christine had started working as an office administrator at Hartwell Ford a few months ago. 
 
 She also leaves behind her mum Sybil Bowyer, her brother James Bowyer, and sister Marion Bevan. 
 
 Her funeral will be held on October 21 at St Paul's Church in Tupsley, Hereford. 
 
 Richard added: "She didn't have the ending she deserved for what she gave to life but she is going to have the farewell she deserves." 
 
 WHAT IS CIGUATERA FISH POISONING? Ciguatera fish poisoning is an illness caused by eating fish that contain toxins produced by algae. 
 
 Terrifyingly, the illness has no cure and symptoms such as vomiting, tingling toes and fingers and nausea can last for years. 
 
 In rare cases, it triggers respiratory or heart failure which causes death. 
 
 The risk is mostly limited to those eating reef fish such as snapper, barracuda and grouper. 
 
 Unfortunately, contaminated fish display no effects and so identifying potential instances of contamination is extremely difficult. 
 
 It is also heat-resistant, meaning cooking the fish thoroughly does not stop it causing sickness. 
 
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 Barbara Coombes was gardening when she snapped. 
 
 She picked up the shovel she had been using, walked into the living room and smashed it over the back of her frail father’s head. 
 
 When the dazed 87-year-old turned towards her, she struck him a second time, before using the blade of the shovel to slit his throat. 
 
 Then, she watched as the father she had grown to loathe bled to death in front of her eyes. 
 
 It was an appalling crime, with an appalling trigger, Manchester Crown Court heard on Wednesday. 
 
 The event that caused her to be overcome by what she would later describe as a ‘black cloud’ was said to have been the discovery of a box. And, inside it, were photos which triggered the most painful memories. 
 
 (Image: Andy Kelvin / Kelvin Media) 
 
 Confronted with indecent images of herself as a child, Barbara Coombes, then in her 50s, recalled how her father Kenneth Coombes had molested her, it was said in court. 
 
 It was claimed that for over 40 years, she was his ‘sex slave’. 
 
 Kenneth, who had served in the RAF in World War II, is of course not here to defend himself against those allegations. He died right there in the living room of the house. 
 
 Precisely what his daughter felt at that moment - perhaps a mixture of horror, revenge, anger and relief - has never been made clear. 
 
 Whatever emotions she felt, these were soon put aside as she set about concealing an horrific crime. 
 
 She managed to roll her dead father up in a carpet, clean up the blood and drag his corpse into the back garden of his semi-detached home at Matlock Road, Reddish in Stockport. 
 
 The next day she ordered a tonne of soil to cover the makeshift grave, spinning a web of lies to conceal the truth of her crime from her family. 
 
 She told her loved ones he had died suddenly from a heart condition. Her brother was informed of the death in a hand-written note she posted through his letterbox. 
 
 Her dad, she insisted, had been taken to hospital and was later cremated. He wouldn’t have wanted ‘the fuss’ of a funeral, she said. 
 
 While the family knew he was dead, although not how, the authorities believed Kenneth was alive. The dark truth of his real fate would remain a secret Barbara Coombes would keep to herself for 12 years. 
 
 While her father was still alive, she had married, but she moved back into the home on Matlock Road when the marriage ended. 
 
 And after his death, despite the body decaying under a tree in the back garden, she continued to live there. 
 
 She slept in a back bedroom, just a few metres from her father’s secret grave. She fraudulently cashed his pension and also a carer’s allowance, handouts which totalled almost £190,000 over the years. 
 
 At one point Barbara Coombes was spotted throwing Kenneth’s possessions away in a skip, but she still wasn’t caught. 
 
 She continued to open her father’s correspondence, even replying in his name. His dentist was told he didn’t want any appointments and his GP, urging him to have the flu vaccine, was also rebuffed. 
 
 Years later, Ms Coombes’ family tried to get their hands on Kenneth's death certificate, but of course it didn’t exist. 
 
 They even asked her whether she had killed him, accidentally, but Ms Coombes put on a show of being affronted and asked how they could possibly pose such an awful question. 
 
 Barbara Coombes skilfully kept the authorities in the dark while fellow residents at Matlock Road knew only that Kenneth had ‘just disappeared’. 
 
 Terry Sever, 70, recalled how strict Kenneth was with his family and told the M.E.N: “If he wanted to watch something on television, she used to have to go out of the room. He was very strict. To my knowledge this man Kenneth just disappeared. I was not that friendly to ask where he went. I just did not see him anymore.” 
 
 Another resident said she ‘assumed’ he had died. She said: “I have lived here for more than 50 years and used to see her walking her little dog. I just cannot believe it because she is such a lovely person. I have known her for many, many years. She lived with her mum and dad and her mum died many, many years ago. 
 
 “I just assumed her dad died many years ago. We used to see them about but then you did not see them anymore.” 
 
 Barbara Coombes’ crime began to unravel in the winter of 2017. 
 
 A housing association officer organised a ‘winter wellness’ visit for Mr Coombes, who would then have been 99 were he still alive. 
 
 Barbara tried to bluff her way out of it but a date was set. 
 
 On January 7 this year, the day before the meeting was scheduled to take place, she walked into Cheadle Heath police station and made a confession which must have shocked detectives: “I murdered my father 12 years ago.” 
 
 She was interviewed by police and then gave a prepared statement in which she said she had been ‘subjected to physical violence from my father from a young age’. 
 
 She said she witnessed her father assaulting her mother on many occasions, and if she tried to intervene he would tell her to mind her own business. 
 
 Her father was said to have cruelly told her he didn’t believe she was his daughter and that he wished she were a boy. 
 
 On the day she killed her father, he had told Ms Coombes to do some gardening and when she went back inside the home she was said to have found those shocking indecent images on the dining table. 
 
 “I felt utterly disgusted and mortified,” she said in a prepared statement. 
 
 She added: “I could feel a black cloud appearing over me. 
 
 “In a haze of disgust and disbelief I picked up a shovel I had been gardening with and walked into the living room where my father was standing.” 
 
 The disbelieving residents of Matlock Road watched as police forensics experts began to dig up the the back garden. 
 
 The body of Kenneth Coombes was uncovered and Barbara Coombes was charged with murder. She was calm and unemotional when she appeared in the dock at Manchester Crown Court on Wednesday, where she was jailed for nine years. She had pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at an earlier hearing. The Crown decided not to pursue the murder charge. She also admitted preventing a lawful burial and fraud. 
 
 Defending, Martin Heslop QC said: “This has to be one of the most tragic cases to come to the courts. This now 63 year old lady of previous good character killed her father following 40 years of extreme sexual, mental and physical abuse at his hand.” 
 
 He said Ms Coombes was raped by her father on ‘hundreds of occasions’ and that her father ‘treated her in effect as his sex slave for 40 years’. 
 
 He may have even fathered a child with her, David, who died days after being born, the court heard. 
 
 The QC said on the day she killed her father, Ms Coombes came into the house after doing some gardening and saw a box of pictures, including explicit photographs of her. 
 
 “As a result it’s clear she finally snapped,” Mr Heslop said. 
 
 Michelle Colborne, for the prosecution, said Ms Coombes had suffered ‘a lifetime of abuse, verbal, physical and potentially sexual’. 
 
 Sentencing, Mr Justice Timothy King said Ms Coombes told a ‘series of elaborate lies to cover your tracks’. 
 
 The judge said he believed Ms Coombes would have never gone to the police if it hadn’t been for the visit from the housing officer. 
 
 The judge said he accepted that the impact of the abuse she claims to have suffered at her father’s hands was ‘devastating’, but said although that could explain the killing, it could not excuse it. 
 
 After sending down Ms Coombes for nine years, the judge said: “Some may think that wholly inadequate, others might say it’s far too much given the history of abuse. 
 
 “I have no doubt in the round it is an appropriate sentence.” 
 
 Outside court, Senior Investigating Officer Duncan Thorpe, of GMP, said: “This is a tragic case in which an elderly man has been killed by his own daughter, who then went on to fraudulently claim benefits of over £180,000. 
 
 “She showed absolutely no concern for what she had done and denied everyone the chance to say goodbye, as Kenneth lay buried at the bottom of his own garden, just metres from her own bedroom window. 
 
 “Despite having years to tell someone what really happened, she only came forward when she had no other choice. 
 
 “The impact on the family and friends of all concerned cannot be underestimated. As these tragic events have come to an end I hope that the family can now move forward with their lives.”
– If you thought being an international superstar was about as crazy as your life could get, think again. Cracked and The Stir round up 15 celebrities with even crazier (and some of them very painful) backgrounds: Woody Harrelson's dad, who walked out on the family in 1968, was a contract killer who probably got away with killing at least two people before going to prison. Then, when he got out early, he was hired to murder a judge, and he went back to prison. Woody tried to get him a retrial, but he died in 2007. Kelsey Grammer first lost his mom and grandpa, whom he lived with. Two years later, his dad was shot to death on his front lawn by a crazed taxi driver. Then his younger sister was murdered by a gang of robbers in a Red Lobster parking lot. Then his two half-brothers died in scuba diving accidents. As if that's not all bad enough, a good friend was killed on 9/11, another good friend was murdered by his own wife, and one of his former wives tried to kill herself and ended up killing their unborn child. Olivia Newton-John's parents fled Germany when the Nazis took over, and her dad ended up getting a job interrogating captured Nazi pilots—not over torture, but over dinner and drinks. One of his interrogations led to the capture of Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess. He later joined MI5's code-breakers and decoded German messages, including secret battle plans that helped the Allies win World War II. Charlize Theron's father was verbally abusive, and while the actress was growing up in South Africa, he once came home drunk and started shooting at Charlize and her mother. Theron's mom managed to get the gun, and ended up killing her husband. Jack Nicholson was born out of wedlock to a 19-year-old aspiring actress, so her parents raised him as their own and he grew up believing his mom was his sister. Leighton Meester's parents and her aunt went to prison when the actress was just a baby, after getting busted smuggling 1,200 pounds of marijuana from Jamaica. Her aunt ended up escaping prison and got on the US Marshals' 15 Most Wanted List. Tobey Maguire's dad robbed a bank across the street from his house—in broad daylight, without a mask. He was caught, not surprisingly, and went to prison for two years. Cracked's full list here; The Stir's here.