Why I'm standing by Doctor Poison: Wife's amazing loyalty to the man guilty of trying to induce an abortion of his mistress's baby

By Kathryn Knight
Last updated at 1:38 AM on 24th October 2009

There are any number of reactions you might expect from a woman whose husband has just been convicted of trying to poison his mistress and induce an abortion of the baby she is carrying.

Anger, certainly, at the adulterous betrayal.

Shock that the man you love - an eminent doctor no less and the father of your two small children - could be capable of such a thing. And distress at the collapse of your family life as you know it.

Loyal wife: Lowri Erin believes her husband Edward is innocent - despite his conviction for trying to poison his mistress and induce an abortion

Lowri Erin feels all of these - but they are not directed in quite the manner you might expect.

Earlier this week, her husband Edward, a respected consultant respiratory physician at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, was found guilty on two counts of attempting to poison his mistress, Bella Prowse.

By putting a series of crushed-up toxic chemicals in her Starbucks coffee and a glass of orange juice, Dr Erin had, an Old Bailey jury ruled, hoped to ensure that her pregnancy, which followed a month-long fling, would end in abortion.

It was an extraordinarily cruel act, yet far from condemning her husband, Lowri remains his staunchest defender, convinced of his innocence and adamant that she will stand by him.

Her fury, instead, is directed at 33-year-old Ms Prowse, who, she maintains, cruelly abused her husband's trust. Edward, she insists, is a 'caring' and 'loyal' man who always puts the needs of others first.

It is an astonishing display of loyalty in the face of overwhelming evidence. For during the three-week trial, the court heard that 44-year-old Erin was a serial philanderer who'd had at least two other affairs during his eight-year marriage - with his wife's full knowledge.

Affair: Consultant Edward Erin (right) and his lover Bella Prowse (left)

What a gullible fool Mrs Erin must be, you think. And yet she is by no means the downtrodden woman you might expect. Attractive, articulate and intelligent, she is a highly educated scientist who by no means lives in her husband's shadow.

Nonetheless, she remains blindly devoted and, many would say, utterly deluded.

'If I thought he was guilty, I would not be here, but I know in my heart he is not capable of what he was accused of,' she insists in her first interview since the end of the court case this week.

'I simply don't recognise the man who was described in court; this arrogant doctor. Anyone who knows him will tell you it bears no relation at all to the man he is.

'I haven't had a chance to see him yet, but the last message I got to him before he was taken to the cells was that I love him.

'I don't understand why Bella has done this to him, and why she has so much bitterness. I don't understand why she would want to do this to her own son. My husband was naive. He trusted her, and she trapped him.'

'I simply don't recognise the man who was described in court; this arrogant doctor'

This version of events - Dr Erin and his wife accuse Bella Prowse of taking the drugs herself - was firmly rejected by a jury this week.

Their verdict has undoubtedly taken its toll on 41-year-old Lowri. Pale and hollow-eyed, she says she has barely slept or eaten since, while her children - Miles, seven, and two-year-old Darcey - are too young to fully absorb what has happened.

'Last night, I had to tell my son the truth, that his Daddy had gone to prison and he wasn't going to come home for quite some time. He said: "How long is a long time? Four weeks?" How do you answer that?' Her eyes fill with tears.

There is, of course, another innocent child in this sorry state of affairs. He is called Ernie, and he is the 13-month-old son of Bella Prowse and, if she is to be believed, Dr Erin.

Dr Erin, who is awaiting sentence in Belmarsh Prison, is still waiting for the results of a DNA test taken seven weeks ago.

Even if the child is proved to be her husband's, there will be no welcome extended towards the boy from Lowri, who says simply: 'As far as I am concerned, that woman has torn our family apart.'

This messy, shameful and humiliating situation must seem a world away from her own family background, which was exactly the kind of stable, middle-class upbringing she has tried to recreate for her own children.

The middle daughter of a teacher and a secretary, who gave up work to raise their three daughters, Lowri grew up in North Wales and studied biochemistry at Cardiff University, where she graduated with first-class honours and went on to take a PhD.

It was during these further studies that, in 1990, she met Edward Erin, a high achiever from Llandough, near Cardiff. He had gained a degree in pharmacology at Kings College London before deciding to move into medicine.

At 25, he was just three years older than her, and when they met in a nightclub in Cardiff, the attraction, says Lowri, was immediate.

Edward Erin was, she recalls, polite, well-spoken and attentive. Within a year, the couple had moved into a shared student house.

'From the beginning, we were close - there were never any arguments. But we didn't live in each other's pockets either; we never have.'

During the Nineties, the couple's careers flourished. Lowri became a research scientist at Cardiff University, while Edward had started to climb the ladder of his medical career.

Together they bought a farmhouse just outside Cardiff and, as the decade came to a close, Lowri's thoughts turned to cementing their relationship and starting a family.

'I wanted children, but it was difficult for him. I think he just couldn't square it with his own family situation.'

She explains how his mother and sister, who lived at his parents' home, both had an eating disorder: 'There were times when neither of them would eat very much, but they would drink a lot.

'Both of them were hospitalised on a number of occasions, and Ed would go back most weekends to try to help out. He couldn't see how he could reconcile looking after them with our family situation. He genuinely had conflicting loyalties.'

Lowri persisted, and in 1999 she issued an ultimatum, telling Erin that she wanted an engagement ring on her finger by the end of the year. She got it just a few days before the new millennium.

No date was set - 'That was the next hurdle,' as Lowri puts it - but by autumn 2001, the issue was somewhat forced when she discovered she was pregnant.

'It wasn't a huge shock to him because he knew I had been trying for a baby, but he was terribly worried about all the conflicting responsibilities he had,' she says.

'Looking back, I think it was partly my fault. Maybe I pushed it too far.'

At Lowri's insistence, the couple married three months later in a low-key ceremony at a Welsh hotel.

Her family were there - she says they always liked Erin and remain fully supportive - but no one from her husband's side of the family attended. 'I think that says a lot,' she says. 'To me, marriage meant stability, a family unit - but to him it was a legal nicety. His parents' marriage hadn't been terribly happy and he didn't have the best role model, but he wanted to do it because he knew it was important to me.'

Moreover, her husband's conflicting loyalties, she insists, were exacerbated by his sister's death in January 2002 at the age of 34 from an illness caused by bulimia.

It was certainly a far from ideal start to a new marriage.

With their first child due within months, the Erins had moved to an apartment in West Kensington to be closer to his new job as a clinical researcher at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London. Lowri confesses she struggled to adapt to being away from family and friends.

'As far as I am concerned, that woman has torn our family apart'

'I think that year was a juggling act for both of us,' she says. 'I had moved to a new area, and Ed was struggling with the demands of becoming a new father and looking after his mum back in Wales.'

Nonetheless, when their son Miles was born in June that year, Lowri says her husband was 'delighted'. By the end of that year, though, she noticed that the times he spent away from home had become more frequent.

'Usually, if he was away, it was in Wales seeing his mum, but obviously I knew if he was there.

'I saw different luggage labels on his bag, and though he made excuses about conferences, in my heart I knew something was going on.'

After yet another weekend away in early 2003, Lowri confronted him. He confessed he had been having a sexual relationship with 'Angela', a woman he'd met through work.

What a devastating revelation for this educated woman, newlywed and with a baby - and yet she chose to forgive him.

'Of course it wasn't something I wanted to hear, but I wasn't angry. He told me it was a distraction and I believed him.

'I knew what he'd been through over the years trying to juggle his responsibilities. He could have turned to gambling or drugs, but this was his coping mechanism.

'This woman was his way of escaping from everything. She lived abroad and represented pure escapism. I accept people think it's very strange I'm talking about him like this, but they weren't there and they don't know the pressure he was under.'

And so, astonishingly, Lowri chose to turn a blind eye to her husband's extra-marital escapades.

Keep the faith: Lowri maintains her cheating husband is a good man

'I think the right term would be reluctant acceptance,' she says. 'I know it was unconventional, but it wasn't the whole time. It was very on-off. I suppose, if I'm honest, I had what I wanted. I had a child. It wasn't that he'd served his purpose, but in my own way I was happy.'

In December 2006, the couple had their second child, a daughter, Darcey. By that time, Lowri says, her husband's relationship with Angela had all but ended, but he was not to remain faithful for long.

In the summer of 2007, she noticed a couple of postcards on the doormat from a woman who signed herself 'Malin'. The tone of the messages immediately made her suspicious.

'I have no idea why she sent them to the house, but I asked Ed about her and he admitted they were involved.'

Malin Roesner, who Dr Erin met when they both worked at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, was a 30-year-old registrar.

Again, Lowri defiantly maintains she wasn't angry at the presence of another young rival in her marriage, once more seeking to justify her husband's infidelity.

'I experienced first hand what he went through following the death of his sister, and then his mother three years later. It was a horribly bleak time for him, and this woman was a distraction. He said it wasn't serious - and I believed him. It didn't last very long.'

By October 2007, when Erin was appointed senior consultant at St Mary's, he had, Lowri says, ended his relationship with Malin. 'He was the one who called it off, but she wouldn't accept it. He was still being pestered by her and getting a lot of text messages.'

Moreover, Lowri maintains her husband had declared his intention to remain faithful - however hollow that promise may have been.

'He told me: "I won't do this any more. I am going to focus on my career and my family."'

But it seems that didn't last long. As the Old Bailey heard, within two months of starting at St Mary's, and following a staff party, Erin had embarked on an affair with Bella Prowse, his secretary.

Yet once again, Lowri leaps to his defence.

'She said to him: "Let's have an affair." She wanted to nab a consultant. They all took advantage of him'

'She had said to him: "Let's have an affair." I think she knew what she wanted from the start. She wanted to nab a consultant. I think it was the same for all the women; they all took advantage of him.'

Once again, it's hard to agree. As the jury heard, in the space of just a few weeks, Erin had wined and dined his lover, paid for hotels, and had even taken her to the family holiday home in Devon. They spent New Year's Eve together, and Dr Erin professed himself in love. Put this to Lowri, however, and she appears unconcerned.

'The holiday home is just bricks and mortar. He took Angela there, too. It doesn't bother me at all. These women were separate from the home life he had with us, and he would never let them intrude.'

Lowri, in fact, was blissfully ignorant of all of this at the time. The first she knew of the catastrophe unfolding behind the scenes was, ironically enough, on Valentine's Day last year, when she opened the door to two police officers.

'They said Ed had been arrested, and they had a search warrant for the house. I was stunned. I had no way of knowing what they were talking about. Ed was in custody so I couldn't even speak to him.'

Only in the small hours, when her husband was allowed home, did the full story emerge. 'He said this woman had said he'd tried to poison her. At first I thought he must mean Malin, but then he said the name Bella.

Mystery: Bella says she didn't know Dr Erin was married until after his arrest

'I said: "Isn't that your secretary?" He said yes, and that she was pregnant, but was trying to claim he had poisoned her baby.'

Another affair, a pregnancy and, worst of all, a heinous accusation. But, as ever, Lowri was astonishingly understanding.

'The fact that she was pregnant was overshadowed so much by what had happened and the fact that Ed had been accused of something so very serious,' she says.

'My first concern was for him and our children. He was in a terrible state. He said he hadn't known her for terribly long, but she had been kind to him and he'd found it easy to talk to her. I think that's how he saw all of his relationships - as a kind of release, a therapy.

'From the beginning, I never doubted him. I absolutely knew he wasn't capable of doing what he was accused of.' Dr Erin was suspended from work with immediate effect.

'We were in limbo because at this point we didn't know exactly what the charges were going to be,' says Lowri. 'No one would tell us about the forensics. All we could do was try to create as stable a family life as possible.'

In October 2008, on one of his bailed appearances at Kennington Police Station, Erin and his wife learned that Bella Prowse had given birth to a healthy boy. The same day, Erin was charged with attempting to administer poison with intent to cause an abortion on three separate occasions.

As a mother herself, wasn't Lowri horrified at the idea that her husband might have knowingly tried to kill an unborn child?

Her response is to say that the medical background she and her husband share makes it impossible for her to believe he was culpable.

'He's got a degree in pharmacology, and he's done a research degree on these compounds. This [the poisoning] was done by an amateur who did not know what he or she was doing. It may not make sense to a layman, but anyone with a science background would know that immediately.

'We both genuinely believed that the forensic evidence would mean he was acquitted.'

Giving evidence in court, Erin claimed that his lover had concocted the mixture of drugs herself in order to frame him, because she was angry he did not wish to set up a family unit with her. However, this version was rejected by the jury and he faces a stiff custodial sentence.

There will be one person waiting for him when he finally reemerges from prison: his ever-loyal wife.

'I stand by him absolutely,' she says. 'I don't have a choice.'

It is far, far more than her husband deserves.