A HUSBAND has admitted strangling his wife during a kinky sex session, but yesterday he denied intending to kill her.

Norman Heaton, 32, throttled mother-of-three Jacqueline Heaton before hiding her body under stairs at their masionette in Anderson Street, South Shields, Tyneside.

Newcastle Crown Court heard that the couple, who had moved to Tyneside from Crook, County Durham, only weeks earlier, had been due to split up on the day of her death after a series of rows.

But they held one last passionate session together in May last year during which Mrs Heaton died.

The prosecution has refused to accept Heaton's guilty plea to manslaughter, and he is being tried for murder.

Paul Sloan, QC, prosecuting, said: "This defendant has, on an earlier occasion, pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of manslaughter. By so pleading he had accepted he killed his wife unlawfully. In that, even if, as he contends, Jacqueline Heaton did consent to the strangulation game, such consent could not provide him with any defence in law given the highly dangerous nature of the activity in question, and this defendant was aware of the dangers.

"The defendant accepts at the very least he is guilty of manslaughter, but denies he intended to kill her or cause her really serious harm."

Heaton was arrested when he contacted police from a mobile phone in Chester-le-Street and told them he had "panicked" after their sex game had gone wrong.

Mr Sloan told the court that officers found Mrs Heaton's body hidden in the cupboard of the house in South Shields while her two-year-old son was being cared for in the house by a neighbour.

Heaton denies murder and the trial continues.