Woman 'who poisoned husband with anti-freeze to clear her debts enquired after hitman'

Kate Knight, 28, also asked Sarah Johnson if she knew where to find a hitman as she confided that husband Lee's employers would pay out the six-figure sum in the event of his death.

Mr Knight, 37, was left deaf, blind, unable to speak and suffering from brain damage after Knight carried out her plan almost two years ago, a jury have been told.

The poisoning - which Knight allegedly researched in the Internet - also left her husband, a factory worker at the JCB plant in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, reliant on kidney dialysis.

Yesterday, Miss Johnson told Stafford Crown Court Knight, a mother-of-one, had claimed her marriage was unhappy and violent.

The court heard Knight had also considered poisoning her husband with ten Ecstasy tablets or giving him an iron overdose, before settling on the anti-freeze plan.

Miss Johnson, who lived next-door-but-one to the couple in Weston Park, Stoke-on-Trent, said: 'She asked me if I knew a hitman. She said it was nothing to do with Lee, and was for a friend of hers.

'I said 'no'. I thought she was fantasising or seeking attention and didn't really know what she was doing.'

Miss Johnson said Mrs Knight mentioned a sum of £50,000 'to pay somebody to do the job'.

She added: 'Later she told me it wasn't for a friend, it was her.

'I thought if she was going to do something this evil she wouldn't be asking somebody off the street who she has only known for a month.'

Miss Johnson said that Knight also told her she planned to feed her husband ten Ecstasy tablets, and had researched how much iron would be needed to give her husband an overdose, according to his body mass index. She said: 'I was round her house one morning and she was on the phone and she was asking if she could get some ecstasy tablets.

'When she came off the phone she said, 'I'm going to Liverpool at the weekend and I'm going to give them to him throughout the course of the day'.

"I knew she had been on the computer quite a lot because she told me and I saw a piece of paper by the computer one day with his body mass index on it and how much he should take. That was for the iron.

'She said she was in a very unhappy relationship, she wanted him gone and she wanted his life insurance off JCB for £250,000.'

Mr Knight was taken ill with severe vomiting in April 2005. Shortly before, Miss Johnson went to Knight's house and the defendant showed her the anti-freeze - which she believed to be de-icer - and a wine bottle.

She said: 'She poured some red wine into the container and asked me if I could smell the de-icer through the wine.

'She said she was going to poison his curry that she was cooking that night. She had done it the previous night and he had complained about the tinny taste in his mouth.

'I don't think she realised it would make him blind or deaf. She told me she just thought his kidneys would pack in and then she could have his life insurance.

'She said she wouldn't be found out anyway because he drank every night so they would just put it down to that.

'I just kept saying to her there must be some other way, that she couldn't do this.' Mr Knight was taken to hospital on April 9.

She later saw Knight walking the dog and the wife told her 'It has worked'.

Miss Johnson said: 'She said they had done a biopsy and nothing had shown up.'

The plot came to light the following month when Miss Johnson discovered Mr Knight was still in intensive care. She told his niece what she knew and was subsequently interviewed by police.

Opening the case, Mr Davis had told the jury anti-freeze contains the potentially fatal chemical ethylene glycol.

Mr Knight was diagnosed with renal failure, and developed neurological problems, causing loss of sight and hearing, and internal bleeding.

Knight, now of Moreton, Wirral, denies attempted murder.