The case against alleged poison curry killer Dena Thompson, has been dismissed by her lawyers as a "rag bag of claims and prejudicial evidence".

Thompson, 43, denies murdering second husband Julian Webb at their home in Yapton nine years ago.

The prosecution claims she hid an overdose of drugs in one or more hot curries, although she says he overdosed deliberately after becoming depressed.

Joanna Greenberg QC, defending, told the Old Bailey yesterday, Thompson had admitted she was a liar but said this did not make her a murderer.

She told the jury: "This case you have sat through is really about the inability to accept Julian betrayed his family and friends by committing suicide.

"This case is about an attempt by the prosecution to prove that by gathering together strange facts and half recalled conversations, and by saying we don't want to accept that Julian committed suicide, and by saying Dena is not a very nice person, that evidence putting Dena in a poor light is evidence on which you can rely to say she committed murder.

"All it has proved is that Dena is not a nice person. You certainly wouldn't buy a second-hand car from her and she is certainly a person who is very frequently a stranger to the truth.

"But that evidence has fallen very short of proving she committed a murder. Julian had the choice here and he made a wrong choice in ending his own life but it was his life and he was free to take it."

The court had earlier heard Thompson defrauded £24,000 from the Woolwich Building Society in Arundel before meeting Mr Webb and tried to frame first-husband Lee Wyatt for the offences.

The prosecution claimed Thompson killed Mr Webb because she feared he was about to find out about her double life as a fraudster and bigamist, when Mr Wyatt came back into her life in 1994.

Prosecutor Michael Birnbaum QC said she murdered him on June 30, 1994, his 31st birthday, by sneaking lethal doses of aspirin and the anti-depressant dothiepin into at least one hot curry.

But Miss Greenberg said the alleged motive and method were "huge gaping holes in the prosecution case, which no amount of nit-picking and detail has come close to explaining."

The alleged motive could be dismissed, she said, in the likely case Mr Webb already knew about the Woolwich frauds and the fact Thompson had not divorced Mr Wyatt.

Miss Greenberg also rubbished the prosecution theory that Mr Webb could have been tricked into taking several doses of drugs over a period of days. She asked: "How many curries can a man eat? How many poisoned curries can a man eat?"

Thompson was criticised by the Crown on Monday for refusing to take the stand but Miss Greenberg told the jury: "If they can't make a case against her without her evidence then you must conclude that she doesn't have a case to answer.

"If the evidence against her is no more than a rag bag of claims and prejudicial evidence, then she doesn't provide the prosecution the opportunity to sneer at her."

The trial continues.