Wife Guilty Of Anti-Freeze Murder Bid

A seventh wedding anniversary celebration with a difference has left a man blind and deaf.

Lee Knight also suffered brain damage and kidney failure, after his wife, Kate, poisoned him with anti-freeze,

She has now been found guilty of attempted murder.

The incident occured in April 2005 when she laced his food with ethylene glycol on their seventh wedding anniversary.

A jury took eight hours to convict Knight, of Meir Hay, Stoke-on-Trent, following a three-week trial.

Mrs Knight hoped to pay off mounting debts by netting £250,000 from her husband's death.

But Mr Knight managed to survive despite spending 16 weeks in a coma after being admitted to hospital in April 2005.

Kate Knight, a former brewery worker - who forged her partner's signature to take out two secret loans for £17,000 - gasped as the verdict was announced.

Judge Simon Tonking remanded Knight in custody for sentencing on a date to be set following pre-sentence reports.

He told Knight: "I will be imposing a very considerable term of imprisonment."

Mr Knight, whose job at the JCB plant in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, meant his wife would have received a death benefit of around £130,000, recently underwent an operation to restore some of his hearing.

But now, aged 37, he still requires two hearing aids and support from two specialists to give evidence at his wife's trial.

He told the court that he knew nothing of the loans, taken out in 2003 and 2004, which motivated his wife's desire to kill him and claim a windfall from his employer.

The jury which convicted Knight was also told that she used the internet search engine Google to find a method of killing, settling on anti-freeze after considering using ecstasy or iron tablets.

(BMcC)