THE jury is expected to retire later today to consider verdicts in the Bromsgrove trial of a woman accused of murdering her partner by stabbing him through the chest with a kitchen knife

Cordelia Farrell denies the murder of her partner, Wayne Coventry, who was stabbed to death in the kitchen of his brother's address in Humphrey Avenue.

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The two week trial at Worcester Crown Court is now coming to an end after prosecution and defence gave closing speeches yesterday and the judge began to sum up the case to the jury.

The prosecution say Cordelia Farrell attacked her partner a little over a month before she killed him with a kitchen knife.

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A jury has been told how just over a month before the alleged murder she had bitten and twisted his testicles, dragging him around his flat by them before stabbing him in the back with a piece of broken crockery.

The 38-year-old of Dainton Grove, Birmingham, denies murder and an alternative charge of manslaughter following Mr Coventry's death on October 14 last year.

She further denies assault occasioning actual bodily harm on September 11 last year.

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Farrell says Mr Coventry put a smaller kitchen knife to her back before the fatal stabbing. In interview she said: "He has got a kitchen knife in my back. If I never had two coats on I probably would have a stab wound."

Dayfdd Enoch QC described the couple's two and a half year relationship as 'toxic' and 'characterised by violence and jealousy'.

The blade penetrated Mr Coventry's chest to a depth of 9cm, piercing his aorta, and he died within a minute or two.

One witness, Tony Marks, said 'she smiled as she pulled the knife out' and 'grinned as if she was pleased in what she had just done'.

The trial continues. A series of trial assessment hearings are being held in the same court later. In court two there will be a series of plea and trial preparation hearings. In today are Raymond Shuck, James Cleghorn, Nathan Mikolajczyk and Luca Batters.

In court three there is the sentence of Isabel Demetrios, a Herefordshire case. After that one of two trials could go ahead - either that of Duncan Goodfield (another Herefordshire case) or Kyle Saunders (a Worcestershire case).