Hedge Fund Boss Had Green Beans Demands Says Ex-Wife

Not Guilty Plea: Mitchinson

The wife of a hedge fund boss, who claims she was a prisoner in their Knightsbridge home, revealed her husband demanded his green beans be neatly laid out at dinner time.

Former Deutsche Bank derivatives expert Guy Mitchinson, 38, ran Castilium Capital with ex-Merrill Lynch trader Alicia Vidler, 37, who says she was “terrified” of her violent husband.

“He became more fixated on the way certain things were done,” she told the Isleworth Crown Court jury. 

“If I put green beans sloppily on a plate he would ask how I could feed any children we had and that I’d be a bad mother.

“I was supposed to chop each end and line them up neatly on a plate. He said he was working so hard the least I could do was arrange the beans properly.”

The court heard Mitchinson demanded the pair discuss work into the early hours, often demanding food around midnight, saying: “If you loved me you’d be cooking me something.”

Alicia said: “It was a nightmare. I’d beg and plead to go to bed and he would try and drag me back downstairs.”

She said her husband formulated a specific verbal framework that she had to use before he accepted any apology from her.

“I had to stare into his eyes and say: ‘I really understand I cannot behave like this’ give him a kiss on the cheek and a hug.”

She said the first assault at their £3.4m home in First Street was in January, last year, made worse due to her painful arthritic condition.

“He grabbed my right wrist because I was not paying any attention to him and it caused incredible pain.

Alicia Claims She Was A 'Prisoner'

“I dug my nails in and drew blood on his wrist and he screamed and shouted more obscenities and when he slammed the bedroom door while I was holding it the handle came apart.

“I had got sick of his screaming and wanted to leave the bedroom. I was terrified, stunned, I had never seen him lose his temper that way.

“I was scared of him and decided to make a run for it, but he got hold of my handbag to stop me leaving and broke the handle then barricaded himself in front of the internal door.

“I tried to barge past him and he threw me against a wall and then took to kicking my legs with his shoes and said: ‘Why are you trying to ruin our marriage? Why don’t you do what I ask.’

“I was left with bruises on my legs and my arms. The pointy part of his shoe got under my kneecap, that was pretty painful.”

Alicia was an equity derivatives trader with Deutsche Bank in Sydney before moving to the UK, where she studied for a PhD in mathematics at Imperial College.

Privately-educated Alicia, who attended Sydney’s Ascham school, founded Mayfair’s Castilium Capital on January 19, 2012, with Mitchinson.

“He would say I had: ’Shit for brains’, that was one of his favourites and that I was a retard and that I was going to drive both of us off a cliff, another phrase he liked.”

She said Mitchinson would regularly drag her out of bed by her ankles. “It would be like a terrible tantrum, but he is six feet four and twice my weight.”

The two July assaults were either side of a ‘Book of Mormon’ afternoon matinee, she explained. “He pushed a big round plate into me, just under my rib cage and kept stabbing me.

“I kept moving back until I hit my head on the brick wall. He was bright red and apoplectic and had his nose against my nose screaming.

“I thought he was going to put his head through my skull and he then slammed me against the side.”

There was another row after they got a taxi home. “He was screaming: ‘How dare you make me get a cab when we are out with your friends and you make me get the bus to work.’

“He was tapping my forehead with a glass and saying: ‘Why don’t you listen to me?’”

Alicia says he then smashed the glass tumbler over her head and she spent the next five hours trying to convince him she needed to go to hospital.

“I was black and blue the next morning. I’d never seen bruises like that in my life, from my left shoulder to the elbow and my right arm had round small bruises where he grabbed me.

“Guy said the bruises were very regrettable and we needed to move forward together and I should not have made him that angry.”

The court heard Mitchinson asked her to wear long sleeves. “He did not want anyone to see the bruises and said it would be the end of our marriage, our business, there would be no children and it would be the end of him.”

Asked why she did not call the police earlier she said: “I did not want to punish him, I did not want to get him into trouble, I just wanted to leave.”

She claimed her husband locked her passport in a safe and she could not smuggle her arthritic medication out of the house.

“It needs to stay refrigerated and is very bulky and I could not leave without it.

“He would check my bag, check how big it was and what was in it and even took to following me into ladies bathrooms.

“He only let me go to see my doctor after I swore I wouldn’t ruin our marriage by telling my GP about the bruises.

“I don’t bruise easily and since I left Guy I have not had a single bruise on me.” 

Mitchinson, of Holmdale Road, West Hampstead has pleaded not guilty to one count of controlling or coercive behaviour between January 1 and July 23, last year.

He also denies three counts of assaulting Ms Vidler at their home address on dates between January 10 and July 16.

Trial continues……….