A jury has been told whether a dark web murder-for-hire site was real or a scam should not affect if a woman accused of trying to hire a hitman to kill a former work colleague is guilty.
Helen Hewlett, 43, is on trial for stalking and soliciting the murder of Paul Belton, 50, with whom she is said to have become “utterly fixated” after being spurned following a brief romantic fling.
Norwich Crown Court has heard she placed Mr Belton’s name and home address in Holt on a dark web site called Online Killers Market together with an order stating “Need someone killed in Norfolk - vital it looks like an accident”.
Hewlett, from King’s Lynn, also paid £17,000 in Bitcoin into a supposed Escrow deposit account on the website.
In closing remarks prosecutor Marti Blair told jurors on Friday they may feel people behind the website were “scam artists seeking to fleece the desperate”.
But she added: “We do not know if it was a scam or whether Paul Belton was genuinely at risk, probably the former, but the fact it was probably a scam should not impact on what her intention was.”
Matthew McNiff, defending, said the website was “obvious nonsense" and “full of red flags that this is a scam”.
He said her postings about wanting Mr Belton killed had been a “way for her to vent and feel that she was being heard and listened to”.
The court has heard how Hewlett and Mr Belton, who were both married with children, met at the Linda McCartney vegetarian frozen food factory in Fakenham where they had a brief workplace fling.
Ms Blair said after being spurned she had “relentlessly” emailed Mr Belton over two and half years, including sending unsolicited explicit sexual images and posting derogatory remarks about him on Facebook.
She said the defence was seeking to portray Mr Belton as a “lying sexual predator who was targeting vulnerable women”.
“I suggest he didn’t bully her, he just didn’t live up to her deluded expectations,” she said.
He had been made to feel “frightened, scared and threatened” because “he didn’t know what she was capable of”, she added.
Mr McNiff accused Mr Belton of “rewriting the truth and sanitising his own behaviour”.
He said: “She doesn’t dispute that she sent Mr Belton messages and posted things about him, sometimes in good humour and sometimes not so much.”
The trial continues.
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