WHEN Chaim Kimel met Danielle Stewart among the partying masses at a Kings Cross nightclub, he could not have known how his relationship with the petite waitress and accountant would influence his life - and ultimately his death.
The private affairs of Mr Kimel, 55, and Stewart, 32, who was half his age when they met at Tatlers nightclub in 2000, have over the past 3½ weeks been played out in front of a Supreme Court jury.
Those eight men and four women yesterday found Stewart not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter by a majority verdict, after she stabbed her husband of two years twice in the abdomen with an antique decorative knife during an argument in their Rose Bay apartment on August 23, 2006.
She had pleaded not guilty to the charge on the grounds of self defence and mental illness, claiming she had no control over her actions.
Their six-year on-off relationship was a love-hate affair between Mr Kimel, described by some during the trial as opinionated and controlling, and Stewart, who suffered from borderline personality disorder as a result of childhood traumas.
Stewart, who worked as an accountant in Surry Hills and as a waitress, had been in a romantic relationship with Jason Gooden for about three years when she met Mr Kimel, a charismatic entrepreneur who ran a furniture business with his adult daughter Amber.
Mr Gooden said his girlfriend was excited Mr Kimel had offered to help her start a furniture business. But he said it became clear to him that Mr Kimel and his girlfriend were "forming a strong relationship and … I knew that it was over [between us]".
"She said she was just working for him but I believed he was a predator so I knew what was happening," Mr Gooden told the court.
The couple, who started a catering business, married in September 2004, although she told a psychiatrist one reason she married him was because her grandmother had lent him thousands of dollars to start the catering business and he still owed her that money.
But by mid-2005, less than a year after their September wedding, Stewart and Mr Kimel had separated. She was living in Balmain and dating Yuri Moel, while Mr Kimel was also dating. They continued to talk by phone daily.
During this separation Stewart became pregnant to Mr Moel. Mr Kimel told her if she wanted to be with him she would have to terminate the pregnancy. She did, despite Mr Moel's pleas to keep the baby. Other conditions of her returning home were that she get psychiatric help and they stop drinking alcohol.
The court heard allegations of physical abuse by both Stewart and Mr Kimel, before and after this positive new phase.
Mr Kimel's daughter, Amber Rubenstein, said she saw bite marks on her father's shoulder and thumb and he had to have his glasses replaced so many times "it became a running joke in the family". During "aggressive outbursts" Stewart would "take them off and smash them or mangle them".
After the stabbing Stewart alleged to a psychiatrist, Dr Stephen Allnut, that in the early stages of the relationship Mr Kimel had told her she had to sleep with him in order to be paid for her work.
Their screaming matches were well known to neighbours in their New South Head Road apartment block.
On the night in question, Stewart and Mr Kimel, who been drinking during dinner and later at a friend's house, argued particularly loudly. One neighbour told police she could hear "terrible screaming" from a woman and another said he heard a female voice shouting "Get the f--- out, get the f--- out."
Mr Kimel's 16-year-old son, who was home at the time, heard loud thuds against the walls and at one point heard what he thought to be his father's body slam against his door. The son, now 18, who has given permission to identify his relationship with the victim but not his name, heard his father say in a tense voice: "What are you doing? Are you crazy?" before Mr Kimel screamed three times as the knife's 30-centimetre blade pierced his torso.
The jury heard that due to Stewart's personality disorder she lived in constant fear that Mr Kimel would leave her.
Those who knew the couple well saw their relationship improve in the months before Mr Kimel's death. When asked if the two loved each other, Stewart's grandmother, Elaine Kraker, said: "Yes, and that's what I can't understand."
Tragically for Mr Kimel and his family, even Stewart believed "things were finally looking up" for the couple, as she wrote in a letter to his former lover and confidante, Angela Batley, less than a month after his death.
"For really the first time in our relationship, everything was really good between Chaim and I," she wrote, adding that they planned to buy a convertible Saab and start a family later that year. "Apart from a few hiccups we were closer to each other than we had ever been."
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