A TEESSIDE woman was strangled by her lover while her six-year-old daughter was in the next room.

Rodney Hollands wrapped Sharon Selway, 40, who he strangled in her nightclothes, in a gold-coloured blanket and put a cushion on her face, so six-year-old Elena would not see her mother's body.

The mother of four, from Middlesbrough, was strangled after telling Hollands, with whom she shared a house in Brece, northern France, that a former lover was better in bed.

Conducting an inquest at Sleaford, Lincolnshire, Coroner Roger Atkinson said: "It is clear that what happened on the morning of April 7, 2002 was that Rodney Hollands strangled her at home in France and that was what caused her death.

"It is clear that they had been living together for some time and the relationship had gone sour."

He recorded a verdict of unlawful killing.

A French psychiatrist told a French court, which sentenced 57-year-old Hollands to ten years in prison last September, that the murder was a crime of passion.

Hollands married in the early 1970s and had four children, but was divorced in 2000, when he went to live in France. He met Ms Selway in June 2000, just before her divorce from Malcolm Selway and she moved to France a year later with two of her children, Benjamin and Elena.

The coroner told Ms Selway's relatives attending Thursday's inquest: "I am sorry you have had to wait for a long time for this, but I am in the hands of the French authorities."