A wife accused of trying to murder her husband with a baseball bat during a bondage session spun a web of lies, including falsely claiming to be suffering from cancer, a court heard.

Dena Thompson, 40, allegedly attacked her 42-year-old husband Richard with a baseball bat and knife as he lay tied up with masking tape on their bathroom floor in January.

Mr Thompson claims she was trying to kill him after her life of deceit, in which she spent thousands of pounds of his money, was finally exposed.

The BT manager told Lewes Crown Court yesterday how he trusted his wife "100 per cent" and never dreamt she had "invented" her job as a college teacher and antique dealer or made up a potentially fatal illness.

The couple set up home in a cottage in Rustington after meeting through a lonely hearts advert in 1998 and were married on a beach in Florida last April.

The court heard Thompson told her husband she had won £300,000 on the National Lottery and the pair were set to embark on a new life in America when she finally confessed it was all lies. Later it emerged the cancer scare had also been fictitious.

Mr Thompson told the jury: "I was concerned that our future would be affected by this, because I had lost my father to cancer and he had an operation and he died."

The court heard Thompson told her husband she had been diagnosed with breast and ovarian cancer following a biopsy and later spent a night in hospital for minor surgery. She told her husband it was key-hole surgery for cancer when it was, in fact, a minor gynaecological procedure leaving only a few stitches in her abdomen.

Joanna Greenberg, defending Thompson, told her husband: "I put it to you that greed played a part in your 'blindness' to all Dena's lies."

She said the "luxuries" and "extras", including restoration of his cottage and foreign holidays, were an incentive for Mr Thompson to overlook his wife's lying - up to the point he realised the money to pay for them was, in fact, his own.

Miss Greenberg added: "You really must have thought you had fallen on your feet."

However Mr Thompson responded: "I fell for her personality.

"I trusted her 100 per cent."

Yesterday the jury heard Thompson has already pleaded guilty to seven criminal off-ences involving dishonesty in relation to her husband's affairs but denies attempted murder.

The case continues.