JURORS watched a man plead for his "missing" wife to come home on national television - almost three weeks after he had killed her.

Mike Gifford-Hull looked despairingly into the cameras, his voice trembling, as he begged her to come home - if not for him but for the sake of their children.

Three weeks earlier he had killed wife Kirsi at their Winchester home and later allegedly thrown her body from an upstairs window and buried her in Micheldever Woods.

Winchester Crown Court was played footage of the press conference in which Gifford-Hull made his emotional appeal.

Det Supt David Kilbride told jurors before it was screened yesterday that the media appeal, screened on national and international TV, was never intended to see how Gifford-Hull responded to and performed before the cameras.

Giving evidence he said: "The hope was that Kirsi was safe and well somewhere. That she had just walked away from the marriage."

He added that the intention was to "seek her out if she was hiding" by showing it in her native country Finland.

Jurors watched as Gifford-Hull, 43, choked back tears during his appeal and said: "I would just like to say to Kirsi please come back'."

He continued: "The kids want you back. If anyone has seen her please let us know where she is. There are two small children who are going frantic."

He described to journalists on October 5 last year how his wife of 19 years was a "family, private person" and that he and their two children were "always thinking that she might come back any minute".

Gifford-Hull said that he had been trying to get his son, then nine, and daughter, then 12, to lead as normal a life as possible but said: "They want to know when she is coming back".

He said they were coping "fantastically" but were distraught, and that he was proud of them.

The court had heard how the family had booked a holiday in Paris and were planning to visit EuroDisney during half-term last October, and the children had been occupying their time by making large banners and cards for their missing mother's birthday.

In an interview after the press conference, Gifford-Hull said he had gone to work at his company in Alresford on the Monday after her disappearance and had been "subconsciously begging her to be at work".

Jurors also heard from the next door neighbours of the Gifford-Hull family, who had kept accounts of every conversation they had with the defendant following police advice.

Jill Drysdale told the court how Gifford-Hull had apologised to her and her husband Peter for the inconvenience when forensic teams carried out a mass search of their garden in their hunt for Kirsi.

Speaking about the children, Mrs Drysdale said: "He said they had sent her text messages and that they had received no reply."

Asked about his mood, she said: "He was talking quite quickly, he was just agitated."

Mr Drysdale told the court how Gifford-Hull, his neighbour of about seven years, told him how he often went out in the middle of the night during Kirsi's supposed disappearance, and he had specifically noted that the children had been left alone at home.

"He was saying that he had to go to Tesco, that he wasn't sleeping very well. He said he was going out in the garden late at night because he couldn't sleep," Mr Drysdale told the court.

On the night the press conference was screened, he said Gifford-Hull had come into his home and watched it and looked "emotional".

Gifford-Hull told him that the experience had been "very traumatic" and that he was annoyed because his son had heard the appeal on local radio as he travelled back with school pals on a coach from Portsmouth following a football match.

Gifford-Hull admits killing his wife but denies murdering her, claiming that it was an accident.

Proceeding.