Wife had 'murder in mind'

Philip Croydon's body was found in a hotel bedroom

A two-timing wife stabbed her husband to death and left him naked on a hotel room floor, a court has heard.

Nottingham Crown Court heard Carol Croydon, 37, stabbed Philip, 49, at the Hilton East Midlands Airport Hotel in Kegworth, Leicestershire.

The jury was told the couple, who were both having secret affairs, had met up to try and save their marriage.

Mrs Croydon, from Edwinstowe, Nottinghamshire, denies the charges. The trial continues.

Mr Croydon checked into the hotel on the afternoon of 25 April.

The court heard that his wife met him there and carried out a "brutal and frenzied attack".

The prosecution claim she then tied him up and left him naked on the bedroom floor with 22 stab wounds before slipping out of the hotel.

Hours later she allegedly made a series of frantic calls to the police and hospitals to report her diabetic husband missing as part of an "elaborate charade" to cover up her crime.

Timothy Spencer QC, prosecuting, said Mrs Croydon had "murder in mind" when she arrived to meet her husband.

He said: "She may not at that stage have completely resolved exactly what she was going to do and how she was going to do it but she had murder in mind."

Mr Spencer told the court: "It is clear that sex was on the agenda .

"The likelihood is that this defendant too was naked when she killed him.

"He must have thought that they were going to have sex together but the fact is she carried out a brutal and must have been frenzied attack on him with a knife."

The next day a hotel maid found the body on the floor at the foot of the bed and Croydon was told that her husband had been found dead.

Mr Spencer said the victim's body had been bound around the wrists "to bolster the impression that Philip Croydon's death was related to some type of bondage type sex."