A WOMAN accused of murdering her husband admitted lying to police about how she came to have the knife she used to stab him to death.

Giving evidence at her trial at Teesside Crown Court yesterday, Jayne Lovegreen, 34, conceded she had changed her evidence after learning her ten-year-old daughter had witnessed her pulling the knife from her boot.

Under cross-examination by prosecution counsel Franz Muller, Mrs Lovegreen was asked why she told police she had just found a knife by chance when she went to her estranged husband's cottage at Baal Hill Farm, near Wolsingham, County Durham, on July 6.

Mrs Lovegreen, of Greenfield Farm, High Etherley, near Bishop Auckland, said she had lied because she did not think anyone would believe that she had just gone to the cottage to fetch her daughter after first arming herself with a knife.

The jury earlier heard how Mr Lovegreen, 34, and his daughter had gone to the MetroCentre, in Gateshead, with his girlfriend and her son on the evening before the stabbing.

It is claimed an angry Mrs Lovegreen told her daughter of her father's affair which prompted Mr Lovegreen to tell her she was an unfit mother and he would not be returning his daughter.

But Mrs Lovegreen told the court she was not jealous over his new relationship and claimed she was just anxious to retrieve her daughter.

Her husband, she claimed, had a history of physically restraining her and she took the knife simply to warn him off.

Mr Muller told the jury that despite Mrs Lovegreen's repeated criticisms of her husband's running of the farm business it had, after taking liabilities into account, assets of £225,000 and for a couple in their early thirties they were doing well.

Mrs Lovegreen replied that there were still some outstanding debts and while she had criticised her husband she had still loved him, but had come to accept they could no longer live together.

She agreed with Mr Muller that she had a short temper and during her marriage had often thrown things and lashed out at her husband, who she conceded never used violence towards her.

Mrs Lovegreen accepts she killed her husband, but denies it was murder.

The trial continues today.