A mum-of-two stabbed to death her 'smitten' toyboy lover after she sent affectionate texts to her ex, a court heard.
Michelle Mills, 31, stabbed 20-year-old Edward Miller 24 times with such ferocity that the blade of the knife broke off.
The blows to his chest, abdomen and back left him bleeding to death in their rented cottage in the picturesque Leicestershire village of Scalford.
Prosecutor Yvonne Coen QC told Lincoln Crown Court that while it seemed to observers that the couple were 'completely smitten with each other', there were problems with the relationship and they had split up on at least one occasion.
She said: "There is no dispute that Miss Mills stabbed Eddie Miller and that she caused his death. She accepts she is guilty of causing his death.
"The prosecution suggests that in drink she became aggressive and lost her temper. She was apparently thinking fondly of her ex during the row and texted him in affectionate terms.
"After Eddie, by her account, had grabbed her and pushed her on the sofa she got away from him. It could have stopped. All he wanted, it seems, was to sit having a drink.
"She wasn't going to let him ignore her so she took it to the next level by taking a knife to him repeatedly, perhaps to punish this young man for what may have happened between them before, but clearly to hurt him very severely, and during the course of it she actually broke the knife.
"If that is right this is a plain case of murder."
The couple, who met when Edward was 18, were seen acting 'lovey dovey' during a Bonfire Night party at the 18th century King's Arms pub where Mills worked part-time.
But hours later, when both were drunk, they argued and Mills texted Trevor Stuckey, the father of her elder child, saying: "I still love you and always have. I'm sorry xx."
In a second text she wrote: "I wish I'd never let you go xx." Moments later she took a kitchen knife and repeatedly stabbed Edward.
She dialled 999 but paramedics could not save him.
Mills allegedly told police: "I grabbed the knife and I went mental. I don't know how many times I stabbed him."
She denies murder on November 6 last year.
The jury heard that Mr Miller met Mills in 2010, when she was 29. He was living with his mother and soon afterwards got his first job, at nearby Scalford Hall hotel.
From January 2012 they lived together at his mother's home before renting a cottage in Scalford. They moved in just two months before his death.
The trial continues.