Boss in love with 'murder' victim

Kirsty Wilson's body was set alight with petrol, the court has heard

A car dealership boss has told a jury he was very much in love with a woman who worked for him in Hampshire who was allegedly murdered by her partner.

Simon Goddard said he fell for Kirsty Wilson after his relationship with his wife became strained and that the pair wanted to spend their lives together.

Miss Wilson's partner Alan Jermey, 41, denies murdering her at their home in Woking, Surrey in August last year.

Mr Jermey is said to have strangled the mother of two and set fire to her body.

Mr Goddard told the jury he and Miss Wilson, 34, had grown extremely close.

"She was the only person that I met in my entire life that I felt I could be 100% myself with and say absolutely anything," he said.

Hotel room

Miss Wilson joined the Basingstoke Mercedes dealership where he was managing director as a trainee in 1998.

He said she was a very outgoing person and was later put in charge of marketing. They began an affair in spring 2007.

"We were both attending a two-day work course away from the office and we had a hotel room for the night so we spent the night together," he said.

He had already told his wife, who he had known since they were teenagers, that he had fallen out of love with her but initially denied having an affair to spare her feelings.

Mr Goddard said he was "desperately trying to manage" the break-up and kept the relationship with Miss Wilson from colleagues at work, where rumours had started.

But his future with his new lover was becoming "clearer and clearer" and he confessed the affair to his wife in April last year.

They have since divorced, Mr Goddard said.

The jury has been told Miss Wilson had told Mr Jermey she was leaving him and that the house in Greenmeads was about to be put on the market.

The trial continues.