AN estranged husband called police and said: "I've just stabbed my wife," a court heard.

Mother-of-five Maureen Troth wrote a will after a threatening phone call from husband Terence, who lay in wait and stabbed her to death on her doorstep seven hours later.

Mrs Troth's testament made it clear she wanted her estate to go to her children and not to her husband of 38 years, said Rex Tedd, QC, prosecuting at Hereford Crown Court.

The document was found after 59-year-old Troth made a 999 call to police saying he had stabbed her. She recorded the threatening call in her diary and had written: "If anything happens, I don't want him to have anything."

Troth, a bricklayer, of Foxwalks Avenue, Rock Hill, Bromsgrove, denies murder. He claims his 57-year-old wife was accidentally stabbed as they "pushed and shoved" each other on the doorstep.

Mrs Troth had moved out six weeks before the incident to live with her sister, June Wakeman, in Hinton Fields, Bromsgrove. Troth made repeated attempts to persuade her to return but she said she wanted "a life".

At four minutes past midnight on February 18, her phone rang, said Mr Tedd. She recorded in her diary that it was Troth, who said: "You are dead."

Troth, who had been drinking heavily, armed himself with a kitchen knife and lay in wait for her just after 7am. After a short argument, he stabbed her once in the heart.

Troth drove off and called police from home. The jury heard a recording of his call, in which he said: "I've just stabbed my wife... she provoked me. She should not have left me... just come and get me." Police found the blood-stained knife on the kitchen table.

In interviews with Det Sgt David Harrison, Troth said he had drunk six or seven pints of lager at Rock Hill Labour Club and seven cans of lager at home. He went to frighten his wife.

He had taken the knife because he was going to threaten to kill himself. His wife said she hated him and was going to have some fun after bringing up five children.

The court head Troth had stabbed himself in the abdomen in 1995, saying he intended to kill himself, but the wounds were superficial.

Troth, who was occasionally in tears, told the jury he was distraught when his wife left him and he "loved her to bits." No other man was involved.

Cross-examined by Mr Tedd, he said he could not recall making the threatening telephone call although records showed it was from his home where he was living alone.

He denied that he had indulged in moral blackmail by playing on the sympathy of his family with suicide attempts that were a sham. He denied planning to carry out his earlier threat to kill and claimed it was an accident when the knife went into his wife's chest. He thought at first she was having an asthma attack.

The trial continues.