A woman accused of poisoning her husband with antifreeze, leaving him blind, deaf and brain-damaged, told Stafford Crown Court yesterday that she was innocent.

Kate Knight, 28, who met her husband, Lee, 37, when she was a teenager, denied that she had given him a glass of spiked red wine. She also denied that she told her neighbour, Sarah Johnson, that she planned to kill him, first with crushed Ecstasy tablets and then antifreeze.

Mrs Knight, of Moreton, Cheshire, was asked by Michael Gledhill, QC, for the defence, whether she had attempted to murder her husband: “Never, no,” she replied.

The prosecution has claimed that she investigated a variety of ways to kill her husband before settling on antifreeze. The active ingredient, ethylene glycol, is highly toxic. William Davis, QC, for the prosecution, has suggested that Mrs Knight saw his death as a way out of an unhappy marriage and mounting debts. She allegedly told her neighbour that she would have a claim on £250,000 in insurance.

Under cross-examination she said that she could not understand why anyone in the house would want to obtain information about ethylene glycol from the internet.

Mr Davis asked her: “There was an item on your computer on ethylene glycol and about symptoms and as little as 140 millilitres being enough to kill an average man.”

Mrs Knight replied: “I don’t remember reading it.”

She said that she had bought a litre bottle of antifreeze at her husband’s request because he had wanted to service their cars before a trip to Wales.

Mrs Knight denies attempting to murder her husband at their home in Meir Hay, Stoke-on-Trent, between January and April 2005.

The trial continues

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