Husband pleads guilty to killing wife with 22 stab wounds
A 56-year-old man has pleaded guilty to the brutal murder of his wife, whom he stabbed at least 22 times in their Edinburgh home while their four children were present, and now faces a mandatory life sentence.
Momodou Bobb appeared at the High Court in Edinburgh on Wednesday, where he admitted to murdering 42-year-old Ndata Bobb at the family’s Restalrig flat on the night of 27 and 28 August 2025. The knife wounds inflicted covered much of her body, her face, head, neck, chest, back, arm and abdomen. She was taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary but did not survive.
Sentencing has been deferred pending the preparation of a background report.
Police were alerted by a 999 call reporting a fight between the couple. When officers arrived, Bobb opened the door wearing only boxer shorts, his hands, chest and feet covered in blood. Two blood-stained knives were found on the kitchen table. Officers immediately began resuscitation efforts while awaiting paramedics. A cardiac ultrasound detected faint heart activity, and Ndata was rushed to hospital, but she died from her injuries. A post-mortem established the cause of death as a seven-centimetre deep stab wound to the neck that severed her jugular vein.
A neighbour recalled hearing the victim scream “leave me alone” and cry loudly before falling to the living room floor.
Bobb himself was found to have serious knife wounds to his hand and was taken to hospital for treatment. While being treated, he initially claimed the injuries were the result of a struggle in which a knife had slipped, a version of events he later abandoned when he entered his guilty plea.
Addressing Bobb in court, Lady Haldane did not spare her words.
“You have pleaded guilty to the murder of your wife Ndata Secka in August of 2025. She was not only your wife, but a mother of four children, three of whom were also your children and one your stepchild.”
She added: “Ndata came from a large family and was much loved. The tragedy of her loss to all who knew and loved her is therefore immense.”
Ndata, originally from Gambia, was one of 15 siblings and half-siblings. She had a child from a previous relationship before meeting Bobb and remarrying in 2015, with the couple going on to have a daughter and two sons together. In 2018, she relocated from Gambia to England to be with her husband. The family had only moved into their Edinburgh flat in December 2023, less than a year before her death.
Bobb, also Gambian-born, had lived in the UK since 1995 and had previously been diagnosed with cancer of the larynx, a condition that left him able to speak only in a whisper at the time of his arrest.
Under Scottish law, the punishment for murder is life imprisonment. Lady Haldane noted that she would be required to fix a minimum punishment period that Bobb must serve before becoming eligible to apply for parole.
For Ndata’s family, spread across Gambia and beyond, no sentence can begin to measure the weight of their loss.
Source: BBC
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