Kill plot girlfriend fails to win jail appeal

A woman who plotted with her lover to kill her boyfriend at his Shropshire home has failed in an appeal to get her convictions overturned.

Sylvia Marie Smith, 23, also known as Rudy, hatched a plan to kill 41-year-old George Black after she began an affair with Robert Field, a court heard.

She then lied to protect her lover after he and a friend killed Mr Black by setting him on fire at his home in Bucknell, near Craven Arms, on December 8, 2008.

Smith, of Cherry Brook Close, Hope-under-Dinmore, near Leominster, appeared at London's Criminal Appeal Court yesterday in a bid to overturn convictions for conspiracy to murder and perverting the course of justice, for which she was handed a 12-year prison sentence last year.

Lawyers had argued the judge in the original case at Worcester Crown Court had misdirected the jury. But top judges dismissed her appeal, saying the jury were given "clear" guidance by the judge and Smith's convictions were "not unsafe".

Smith also had her appeal against her jail term rejected.

A further appeal by Gareth Edward Powell, 30, of The Grove, Shobdon, near Leominster, against a life sentence for the murder of Mr Black was also dismissed at yesterday's hearing.

The court heard Smith had been with Mr Black for about five years and lived with him at the time of his murder.

She had started an affair with 23-year-old Field about a year earlier and this had been discovered by his girlfriend, who then told Mr Black about it.

The judge said Mr Black was a "large man who had a reputation for intimidation and violence", and he arranged to meet Field on December 8, 2008, to remonstrate with him.

But, before the meeting took place, Field and his friend Powell went to Mr Black's home - where Field doused him in petrol and kerosene and set him on fire.

Mr Black died in hospital two days later.

The court heard Smith, who was pregnant with a child she believed to be Field's at the time of the murder, initially claimed she did not know who killed Mr Black, but later changed her story and named Field and Powell.

By Peter Kitchen