A JURY have been asked to consider whether a pharmacist accused of murdering his wife was a man capable of enacting “fantasy thoughts into real life effect”.

Jurors have heard how Mitesh Patel, 37, created an entire world hidden from his wife, Jessica Patel, who was found dead after being strangled and suffocated in the couple’s home in May.

Closing speeches from the prosecution and defence counsel were heard in Teesside Crown Court yesterday at the beginning of the third week of Mr Patel’s trial.

He has pleaded not guilty to the murder of his 34-year-old wife, who worked alongside him in the Roman Road Pharmacy, in Middlesbrough.

Nicholas Campbell QC, prosecuting, submitted to jurors that Mr Patel initiated a plan to kill his wife years before she died, relying on a £2m life insurance policy pay out on her death to fund his move to Australia to be with his “soulmate”, Amit Patel.

Mr Campbell said: “This murder was the culmination of five years of planning. He made some very real and obvious mistakes.

“The evidence reveals he set aside, in his planning, the means to kill by using insulin and had researched other means, not least strangulation.”

He added: “When she came through the door it’s likely he injected her immediately, subduing her.

“He then strangled her. Having attacked her and left her for dead he then goes about making it look like a burglary, he takes money from her purse, was it then that he heard her stirring.

“I say that because the plastic bag was part of the means he finally did kill her – where did that come from?

“What we submit is that they clearly point to the defendant being responsible. This marriage was far from ‘The Waltons’.”

However, defence barrister Toby Hedworth QC, put it to jurors that Mr Patel being a “bad husband”, a “cheat and a serial liar” bore no relevance to whether or not he killed his pharmacist wife, Mrs Patel, who was found dead in their home on The Avenue, Linthorpe, Middlesbrough.

Mr Hedworth said: “When you consider what the evidence actually is in this case, we accept that there are aspects of the evidence that Mitesh Patel cannot explain, and has not attempted to explain.

“You may accept that one of the hallmarks of the guilty person who lies to get out of their guilt is that they have an answer for everything. This man does not.

“He has not come up before you with some elaborate scenario to explain things away. He doesn’t have to.”

The defence barrister challenged theories that Mr Patel had been planning for years to kill his wife, whom he married in , saying that if it was the case, the jury may conclude Mrs Patel’s murder was “the most cack-handed killing ever carried out”.

Mr Hedworth addressed jurors and added: “And so, we submit, that however suspicious aspects of evidence inevitably are, if you stand back, this simply isn’t a killing that took place as the culmination of a carefully thought-out and long-term plan to be with the man of his dreams in Australia.”

High Court judge Mr Justice James Goss QC – who is overseeing proceedings – will sum up the case for the prosecution and defence before sending the jury out later tomorrow for them to consider their verdict.

The trial continues.