A WOMAN who was strangled, imprisoned and brutalised by her partner, in a seven-year reign of violence in their secluded Wye Valley woodland caravan, thought she was going to be killed, a court was told.

Antonio Villafane, 67 – also known as Anthony Manson – dragged her by the hair, pressed a knife to her throat and said he would "chop her up and feed her to their dogs", BBC Wales News reported from Cardiff Crown Court.

"No-one can hear you scream in the middle of the forest," the jury heard he said.

Villafane was arrested after a manhunt in the woods near Tintern, and later went on the run for over a year before being brought to justice, with the jury finding him guilty of seven charges last Thursday – including strangling 64-year-old Sally Ann Norman, coercively controlling her, wounding, assault and fraud.

The trial heard that the duo met in Glastonbury in 2015, when the self-styled music coach was handing out leaflets for singing workshops.

BBC Wales News reported that the mother-of-two left her husband of 30 years as their relationship 'snowballed', and Villafane used her £280,000 divorce settlement to buy a woodland site at Pontysaison, an off-grid gypsy caravan without electricity or running water, ponies and vehicles.

But after the two Sufi Islam followers started living together, he turned violent, imprisoning his victim for hours, attacking her and even admitting to police to strangling her to unconsciousness “more than 10 times”.

Prosecutor Emma Harris told the jury the case was about "control, manipulation and violence", with the victim saying he had hit her over the head with a fire poker, beaten her with a walking stick, punched and kicked her, and forced her to pray for forgiveness, even naked outside on a cold winter night.

The terrified victim thought he wanted to kill her and would bury her in a new hole dug in the ground, the court heard.

She also told police he had tied her hands and feet and repeatedly forced her head into a plastic box filled with dirty rusty water.

"He just overpowered me... I thought he was going to drown me," she said on a police video played to the court.

Villafane pulled her hair out and forced her to cut it off, and beat her in the face, saying "if anyone asks it's between you and your God, nothing to do with them".

He also made her wear a hijab head-dress to cover bruises he inflicted on her for refusing to have sex, and at other times, the court heard.

Mrs Norman told how Villafane had been "charming charismatic and loveable" to begin with, but had cut her off her from family and friends, spent her money and forced her to work on the land.

Asked why she hadn't reported his violence earlier, she told the court via video link: "He said 'I will kill your children, I will kill your family and then I will come and finish you off.”

But she finally left him in July 2023 after he tried to strangle her while forcing her to eat a Chinese meal, with police launching a manhunt in the woodland to track Villafane down.

Villafane, who declined to give evidence in court, was acquitted of one wounding charge, but convicted of seven others.

Adjourning the case for reports, Judge Daniel Williams told him he faces "a substantial prison sentence".