Woman 'killed husband for £35,000'

A woman killed her second husband by tricking him into taking a drugs overdose so she could claim £35,000 death benefits.

Dena Thompson, 43, was also afraid her double life as a building society fraudster was about to be exposed, the Old Bailey was told today.

Her victim, Julian Webb, was killed on his 31st birthday "by subterfuge" nine years ago at the couple's home in Yapton, West Sussex, the jury heard.

Afterwards Thompson claimed Mr Webb had been depressed and had killed himself, although friends and relatives knew him to be "happy-go-lucky".

Michael Birnbaum, QC, prosecuting, said: "In a single sentence the allegation in this case is that the defendant murdered her second husband by giving him large quantities of drugs. We say he didn't kill himself, the defendant killed him by subterfuge. She tricked him into taking lethal quantities of drugs when he had no idea they might kill him."

The jury heard how, in the last week of his life, Mr Webb stopped going to work or the gym he attended regularly, and that Mrs Thompson prevented friends and relatives contacting him.

After he died from an overdose of aspirin and anti-depressants, an open inquest verdict was returned. Mr Birnbaum told the court: "She said he had become depressed and must have killed himself. The police investigation perhaps wasn't as thorough as it might have been. Evidence has now come to light which wasn't available to the police or the coroner in the summer of 1994."

He told the jury that, at the time of Mr Webb's death, Thompson was leading a double life. Her first husband, Lee Wyatt, had left her because she had "made his life a misery".

But Mr Webb was unaware she was still in touch with him, and had persuaded him to write a series of letters in effect implicating himself in a fraud she was carrying out at the Woolwich Building Society in Arundel, where she worked. Mr Birnbaum added there were two possible motives for the murder. The first was that Mr Webb was in a company pension fund and a £35,000 benefit was payable on his death.

Mrs Thompson was "so determined to get that money she enquired about it within hours of his death". The second motive, said Mr Birnbaum, was that she feared her double life was about to be exposed and that her second husband would discover she had been seeing the first.

Mr Birnbaum said the antidepressants found in Mr Webb's body had been prescribed for Thompson, who he described as disturbed and manipulative.

In the months before his death she had been in regular contact with her first husband, Mr Wyatt a fairground worker.

Describing her relationship with him as "quite extraordinary" he said: "She had an idea of blaming Lee Wyatt for the frauds and persuaded him to write a number of letters. She was setting him up.

"Nobody else knew of her relationship with Lee and she fabricated allegations of crime against him. She had literally been leading a double life. It is no coincidence Julian Webb died just a week after Lee had arrived to see her."

Mr Birnbaum added: "No one could have taken the number of drugs he must have taken by accident but we must make you sure he didn't kill himself. The only person who had the opportunity to kill him was Dena."

Thompson denies murder. The case continues.