Bishop's Waltham attempted murder: Woman jailed after trying to kill her friend over £3,900 bingo debt

Vicious Paula Ayres was locked up after being convicted by a jury yesterday for the brutal stabbing of 63-year-old friend, Julie Page.

The 51-year-old mother-of-three left her unsuspecting pal ‘for dead’ after launching a bloody, prolonged assault in Mrs Page’s home, in Oak Road, Bishop’s Waltham, on July 22, last year.

Part-time cleaner Ayres, who refused to give evidence during her trial, remained motionless as she was jailed.

Sentencing Judge Roger Hetherington said: ‘It was inevitable that you would have been caught out. It says something about your mental state that you didn’t seem to realise this at all.’

The court heard how Ayres snapped in an ‘explosion of anger’ after realising she had been ‘rumbled’ for pilfering £3,900 from Mrs Page’s marital bank account.

The scheming crook used her regular Sunday bingo trips in Eastleigh to snatch Mrs Page’s card and withdraw money from a nearby cash machine.

Ayres feared she had been caught after overhearing a conversation between Mrs Page and a family member about the thefts while round her pal’s house.

In a bid to silence her friend of six years, calculating Ayres left to grab a Stanley knife from her home before returning to her victim’s house to carry out her chilling ambush.

Ayres used a ‘ruse’ to send away mutual friend Angela Edwards, asking her to fetch some Coffee Mate so the coast was clear to murder Mrs Page.

The twisted thief then launched a relentless attack that saw her plunge the knife into her helpless victim’s neck twice after ‘lunging at her from behind’ and holding her head in a ‘vice-like grip’.

She then stabbed her prey five times in the back and ripped her ear when pulling out an earring.

Mrs Page said during her evidence: ‘She put her hands around my neck. I thought “Christ what’s going on?”.

‘I said to Paula: “What’s wrong with you? Why are you doing this?”.’

The victim was then forced to ‘play dead’ before Ayres left her on the floor – only to be arrested by police shortly after, having put the knife in her washing machine to cover-up her crime.

‘The stabbing to the neck resulted in two deep and gaping wounds, graphically shown in photographs, and copious amounts of blood – some of which got onto you and a towel which you wrapped around the knife,’ added Judge Hetherington.

‘You pretended to Angela Edwards that you just cut yourself on a tin opener and returned with her to your own house, put the towel and knife in the washing machine and carried on as if nothing had happened.’

Weeks before the attack, Ayres had been convicted of three counts of fraud after she was caught stealing from a vulnerable 86-year-old pensioner, Leslie Smith.

Ayres, who was a ‘trusted family friend’ used Mr Smith’s bank card in 2016 to siphon £2,337.62 from her victim’s savings ‘for her own personal gain’, prosecutor Simon Jones said.

A total of £1,590 went towards paying Winchester City Council bills, with £550 given to Ross & Roberts bailiffs and £197.62 was used to pay back a loan by Amigo.

Judge Hetherington said Ayres feared she would be jailed if reported to police.

‘It is understandable that as a result you would have become extremely worried...What is inexplicable by any ordinary standard is why, faced with that understandable worry, you lost all sense of proportion and were determined to carry out a vicious assault against Julie Page,’ he told a packed courtroom.

‘Had you been thinking straight you would have realised that it would have had no hope of putting an end to the investigation of the theft. But you were not thinking straight.’

Paul Casey, defending, said he could offer ‘no mitigation’ for the ‘extremely grave offence’.

However, he said his client had suffered years of depression and prolonged grief after the stillbirth of her fourth child in 2008.

Pleading for mercy, Mr Casey added: ‘She is the author of her own misfortune and the author of a great deal of misfortune to other innocent victims who trusted her and regarded her as a friend.

‘She has thrown away everything that is positive in her life and will spend the next part of her life – important years for her children – in custody.’

Judge Hetherington took Ayres’ mental health into account when sentencing.

The 51-year-old, of Willow Road, Bishop’s Waltham, will now serve seven years in prison before being released on licence.