A BOURNEMOUTH woman stabbed her husband to death in a row over a hidden bottle of cider, it was alleged to a jury yesterday.

Reading Crown Court was told that Samantha Read, of Coleman Road, West Howe, who denies murder, knifed Stephen Spicer in the groin as he sat on a sofa at the flat they shared in Reading.

The court heard that Dean Walsh, a lodger in the house, who Read had stabbed in the chest as he slept two weeks earlier, was woken at night and asked by her to check on Spicer minutes after the attack.

Walsh told the court how he decided Mr Spicer "looked alright" and went to make himself a sandwich as Read, 33, shouted that the stabbed man had stolen or hidden her cider.

Mr Spicer died of blood loss, which soaked the sofa, after the attack on June 23 last year.

Mr Walsh told the court Read had plunged a knife into the bone at the top of his chest two weeks earlier, telling him it was to stop gossip that they were having an affair.

He said that after Read awoke him to tell him she had stabbed Mr Spicer: "I walked down the hall and saw Stephen sitting on the edge of the sofa with his head hung forwards and his arms around his knees. "I said: 'Stephen, are you all right?' He looked all right to me."

Prosecutor, Adrian Redgrave QC, said Mr Walsh saw the blood and dialled 999 when Read tried to drag him to the back door.

A post mortem examination revealed Mr Spicer died from a single stab wound to the groin , which severed a main artery.

Police searched the flat and found the cider under a mattress of a bed in the flat.

On arrest Read told police she had pulled Mr Spicer inside the flat, believing someone in the courtyard at the back of their home had stabbed him.

Later she told them Mr Walsh was the murderer.

The case continues.