A MURDER trial took a dramatic twist today when a woman accused of torturing her long-suffering boyfriend to death admitted killing him.

At the end of the prosecution case, Clare Nicholls pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Andrew Gardner – but prosecutors refused to accept it.

Instead, the murder trial continued and Miss Nicholls went into the witness box to give evidence to the jury on the ninth day of the Teesside Crown Court case.

In a tense question and answer session with barristers, she accepted kneeing Mr Gardner in the ribs with enough force to fracture them, and admitted slapping and punching him.

The 28-year-old told the court that she delivered the blows which knocked Mr Gardner unconscious and appeared to have killed him on March 13 last year.

She said she twice struck the 35-year-old to the face, which caused him to rock backwards and forwards, then fall to the ground where he banged his head.

Appearing to fight back tears throughout her evidence, Miss Nicholls told the jury how she asked her brother, Simon, 24, to check for a pulse and try to revive Mr Gardner.

Some time later, Mr Nicholls contacted the emergency services and after a paramedic crew arrived at the house in Chilton, County Durham, Mr Gardner was pronounced dead.

A post-mortem examination showed that he had more than 100 injuries – including 21 rib fractures, burns, whip-marks, cuts and bruises – as well as bleeding on the brain.

Miss Nicholls accepted having a bad temper and being controlling, and told the jury that she and Mr Gardner had a row on the day of his death about his laziness.

Under cross-examination from her brother’s barrister, Jamie Hill, QC, she admitted being responsible for “the best part” of Mr Gardner’s injuries, but not all of them.

She denied scalding her partner with a kettle of boiling water, holding him against a piping hot radiator, whipping him with curtain wire or branding him with a heated cigarette lighter.

During her evidence, Miss Nicholls said her brother had also injured Mr Gardner’s ribs when he stuck up for her during arguments the couple had.

It is alleged that Mr Nicholls, his sister and her former lover, Steven Martin, 44, all of Arthur Street, Chilton, tortured Mr Gardner for weeks before his death.

All three deny murder, and the case continues.