The owner of a fish and chip shop near Newcastle Emlyn has been cleared of murder.
Former Cardigan businessman Geoffrey Bran, aged 71, appeared before Swansea Crown Court accused of murdering Mavis Bran by throwing boiling cooking oil over her.
A jury on Tuesday morning cleared Bran of murder and manslaughter and the pensioner was discharged.
During the two-week trial, a jury heard how Mrs Bran died after being covered in boiling hot cooking oil at a fish and chip restaurant the couple ran from their home in Hermon near Newcastle Emlyn, called Chipoteria.
Bran told Swansea Crown Court that his wife fell and pulled the fryers over herself.
The oil came out of the pans “like a waterfall”, he said.
Mrs Bran died six days later from the effects of severe burns.
The prosecution claimed that Bran had poured oil over his wife.
Bran told the court their marriage of more than 30 years had been good although they occasionally argued, “but not seriously. I never hit her”.
He said his wife began to drink more and more until she was drinking two and a half bottles of red wine a day, but he gave up completely for health reasons.
On 23 October Mavis began drinking red wine at 9.30am and had at least one brandy.
He said shortly after midday an order came in from Guto Jones and they prepared to cook—he the chips in a cabin and Mavis the fish in a van.
Mavis came into the cabin and said the cooking oil in the van was not good enough and so used his fryers to cook four pieces of fish.
“I told her to turn down the temperature because I had used the fryers for chips,” he said.
Bran left to prepare some more chips and just after he returned Mavis came into the cabin and complained that he had let the fish over cook.
She scooped the fish out of the fryers and put them onto trays, spilling some oil as she did so.
The next thing he saw, he said, was his wife “flying towards the ground.”
“I did not see her actually fall and I don’t know why she fell. I saw her when her head was about nine inches from the floor.
“She grabbed hold of the fryers as she fell and they began to move. I think it was the weight of the oil that was pushing them. The whole thing came away.
“The oil came out like a waterfall, all over her chest at first,” he added.
Mrs Bran was airlifted to Morriston hospital in Swansea but her condition worsened. She was never able to give police an account of what happened.
Bran told the jury later that he now felt “terrible” about not telephoning for an ambulance as his wife tried to cope with burns that would prove to be fatal.