Books 'inspired' murder case girl

Anne Mendel was stabbed during a burglary

A teenage girl accused of murder has spoken of her fascination with the work of crime thriller authors, James Patterson and Martina Cole.

Kemi Adeyoola, 18, is accused of stabbing her 84-year-old neighbour Anne Mendel in Golders Green, north London.

She told the Old Bailey that an 18-page hand-written document found in her cell was a draft for a crime thriller, not a murder manual as prosecutors allege.

Miss Adeyoola denies murdering the pensioner in March last year.

The prosecution allege Miss Adeyoola set out a blueprint for murder while at a young offenders' institute in Essex.

'Scribbling of a child'

But she told the court on Wednesday it was a draft for a book.

"I have been reading James Patterson and Martina Cole and it fascinated me," she said.

"At the time I thought it was pretty good but now I look back, it's the scribbling of a 16-year-old child."

All you had to do was go on a date with someone for £500 Kemi Adeyoola

She told the court it was written while serving three months detention and three months under supervision on licence for shoplifting offences.

On her release she began working as a £500-a-night escort and rented an £800-a-month flat with another teenager in Belsize Square, Hampstead, north London.

She said: "It's a professional and legitimate business. All you had to do was go on a date with someone for £500."

Miss Adeyoola said on the morning of Mrs Mendel's death she was in west London trying to get back a purse she had left on a bus.

Sir Allan Green QC accused her of priding herself on her acting skills, which she denied.

He told the court that in a letter written in Bullwood Hall detention centre she wrote of how she wept, mumbled and arched her back in an interview with a youth worker to try to get her to recommend her for a community sentence rather than custody.

"It worked such a treat that I could tell she was touched," she wrote.

The case continues.