A conniving bigamist accused of killing her husband may have slipped a fatal dose of drugs into his birthday meal, the Old Bailey heard.

Dena Thompson, 43, said Julian Webb had eaten a hot curry to celebrate his 31st birthday in June 1994.

He died a few hours later at their home in Douglas Close, Yapton, of an overdose of aspirin and the antidepressant Dothiepin.

Originally, the cause of death was thought to be suicide after tests showed Mr Webb had swallowed several dozen tablets and capsules.

An open verdict was recorded at an inquest.

But Thompson was charged with murder after detectives reopened the case and exhumed Mr Webb's body in 2001.

Michael Birnbaum QC, prosecuting, described Thompson, now living in Cullompton, Devon, as "a very disturbed person" who had two motives for the murder - money and the fact her double life as a building society fraudster was about to be exposed.

The court heard Thompson had phoned a friend in America and told him her husband had become ill after eating the very hot curry.

Mr Birnbaum said: "Dothiepin is a drug with a bitter taste and it would be hard to administer it to someone unless it was disguised in some way and one way of disguising it would be in a hot curry.

"She may have disguised the bitter taste with spicy food such as curry."

Newspaper executive Don Hudson told police Thompson told him she had taken Mr Webb to his favourite restaurant for his birthday.

Mr Birnbaum said: "Julian had said he was going to eat food as hot as he could stand because it was his birthday.

"We suggest that the evidence points strongly to her having arranged things in stages.

"By using trickery, she could have disguised the bitter taste in spicy foods such as curry."

Mr Birnbaum told the jury that Thompson had led a double life.

She had married Mr Webb bigamously in 1991 before she was divorced from first husband Lee Wyatt, who had left her because she had "made his life a misery".

Mr Webb was unaware she was still in touch with the fairground worker and that she had persuaded him to write a series of letters implicating himself in a £23,000 fraud she had carried out at the Woolwich Building Society in Arundel, where she worked.

Her plan was threatened when Mr Wyatt turned up at their home.

Mr Birnbaum said there was a "real danger" Mr Wyatt and Mr Webb would meet, which would expose her deceptions.

She was later convicted of the fraud and jailed for 18 months in 1995.

Money could also have been a motive for killing newspaper advertising salesman Mr Webb.

The jury heard Thompson rang her husband's boss at the West Sussex Gazette within hours of his death, making inquiries about £35,000 which was to be released from his pension when he died.

The money was eventually paid to Mr Webb's mother, Rosemary, when it emerged that the marriage had been bigamous.

Thompson was anxious for the body to be buried quickly or cremated and was annoyed when Mr Webb was laid to rest in a family plot.

Mr Birnbaum said: "Dena Thompson says, in the last days of his life, he became depressed and perhaps committed suicide.

"There was a police investigation but perhaps it was not as detailed as it might have been.

"We, the prosecution, say Julian did not kill himself. The defendant killed him by subterfuge.

"She tricked him into taking lethal quantities of drugs."

Mr Birnbaum described the victim as a "fit and healthy man" who had turned 31 on June 30, 1994.

He was a body builder who went to the gym three times a week and fasted regularly to rid his body of toxins.

However, during the last week of his life his routine changed. He did not go to work and stopped going to the gym.

Mr Birnbaum said Thompson prevented friends and relatives from speaking to her husband.

The defendant had told police that he had become depressed after being refused a "green card" to work in America.

Thompson maintained he had "hit the bottle" and was on steroids in the days up to his death, although friends told police he hardly ever drank and had given up steroids after a brief experiment.

The court also heard Thompson had health problems which she greatly exaggerated.

She suffered occasionally from depression and had had her gall bladder removed, although she told friends she was suffering from cancer and was terminally ill.

Mr Birnbaum said: "She had a tendency to lie about her illnesses and exaggerate them. She also had a tendency to harm herself and lie that Lee had done it."

Thompson had told police her husband had suffered fever and food poisoning before his death.

But Mr Birnbaum told the jury to take into account her lies about her own health when considering whether this was true.

She said he had spent his birthday in bed and looked like he had been drinking, adding that she slept in another room because he was snoring and later found him dead with blood dripping down the side of his mouth "like a vampire".

When ambulance men came to the house at 1.20am on July 1, 1994, after being called by Thompson, she went to a bedside cabinet and took out an empty bottle of soluble aspirin and an empty bottle of her prescribed anti-depressants. Mr Birnbaum said: "These are the very drugs which had killed Julian.

"How did she know the empty bottle were in the drawer?

"If she was looking after him, how did he manage to get hold of the drugs which were in the kitchen and take them?"

Mr Birnbaum said Mr Webb's death could not have been an accident as it was not possible to take the two kinds of drugs in such large quantities by mistake.

The only person who had the opportunity to kill him was Thompson.

"If he did not die by his own hand then he must have died by hers," he said.

Thompson denies murder. The trial continues.