Poisoning wife jailed for 30 years

Kate Knight, 28, used "premeditated planning of a most callous kind" when she attempted to murder Lee Knight by lacing his food with ethylene glycol on their seventh wedding anniversary, Stafford Crown Court was told.

Mr Knight, 37, spent 10 weeks in a coma and was left with brain damage, kidney failure and in need of a transplant following the poisoning in April 2005.

Judge Simon Tonking said Knight had shown a lack of mercy as she watched her husband's illness take hold. He told her: "The devastation you have brought to his life is apparent to everyone who saw him giving evidence in this case. But while he did so there was little, if any, sign of remorse on your part."

Knight rocked back and forth, cried, and appeared shaken during the sentencing hearing. Judge Tonking said her offence was "committed either wholly or predominantly for gain".

Last month a jury at Stafford Crown Court took eight hours to convict Knight, of Meir Hay, Stoke-on-Trent, of attempted murder following a three-week trial. The court was told she had planned to use the £130,000 death benefit from her husband's employer, JCB in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, to pay off mounting debts after forging her husband's signature to take out two secret loans for £17,000.

Knight, a former brewery worker, used the internet search engine Google to find a method of killing, settling on anti-freeze after considering using ecstasy or iron tablets, the jury was told. Knight, who married at 19, administered the anti-freeze to her husband in red wine and an Indian takeaway he ate on their wedding anniversary.

The court heard that Knight was "living in a world of fantasy" and her idea to kill her husband began as "idle musings of a bored and lonely housewife" which eventually became a reality. Judge Tonking told Knight: "Your first thought about killing your husband may well have been born out of fantasy which then drifted into a reality."

Judge Tonking said Knight's crime fell into the "top of the scale" for sentencing attempted murder cases.

Mr Knight has virtually no sight and is registered blind as a result of the poisoning. He is also profoundly deaf, has no kidney function and some paralysis of his facial muscles. He is currently awaiting consideration for a kidney transplant from his brother, the court heard.