A woman accused of murdering her husband and then dumping his body at the bottom of her garden sobbed in court before telling jurors: “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

In an emotional outburst at the conclusion of a second day of answering questions from her legal team, Maureen Rickards also claimed her spouse - geologist Jeremy Rickards - had “set her up”.

The 50-year-old had initially become upset during her trial at Canterbury Crown Court as she was being asked about a 15-minute recording found on her phone after Mr Rickards’s badly decomposing body was discovered by police behind her home in the city last summer.

Dated June 7, it was among several she had filmed in the month leading up to his killing and included sound of the “frail and vulnerable” 65-year-old pleading - the prosecution says - “Please stop hitting me, love” as well as Rickards threatening to kill him.

But having been asked by her barrister Ian Henderson KC about the clip, for which the jury has been given a ‘suggested’ transcript for what can be heard, Rickards replied: “It is the most distressing and demeaning video. I don’t know why you are asking me about that video.

“I am not going through that transcript again. It gives me nightmares.”

Denying she was hitting her husband or threatening him in the recording - which was predominantly audio rather than visual - she repeated her earlier assertions in court that he was known to often fall on luggage and belongings cluttering her room, as well as on the stairs.

It was when asked about any such pleas to stop striking him, she told the jury: “I don’t remember. I don’t care anymore. He is dead and I am facing the consequences of what I didn’t do.

“He set me up, he set me up. He wanted to commit suicide and someone to answer for it. Good riddance to Jeremy. He is bad rubbish. I am done.”

Rickards is accused of stabbing her husband five times in the chest - two of which penetrated his heart - after subjecting him to weeks of domestic abuse.

His injuries found during a post-mortem examination included ones from strangulation as well as fractured ribs, some possibly caused up to 10 weeks before he was allegedly murdered by Rickards.

The prosecution case is that she stored his dead body - dressed in his underwear - in a cupboard in her bedroom before wrapping him in bin bags and putting him inside a nylon-weave holdall.

It is alleged she then moved him from her loft room, down two flights of stairs, and to the hiding place under grass cuttings at the bottom of the overgrown rear garden at her student accommodation in St Martin’s Road.

The mum-of-one is also accused of attempting to remove his blood from carpet in her bedroom and in the cupboard.

The grim discovery of Mr Rickards’s body was made on July 11 last year, six days after he had been reported missing by the couple’s daughter, Chima Rickards.

She became concerned about his whereabouts after receiving texts and WhatsApp messages purportedly from him saying he was in Saudi Arabia, and then from her mother claiming he had committed suicide while abroad.

Some of the communications were in fact sent by the defendant using her dead husband’s phone, the court was told.

The final sighting of Mr Rickards was on June 7, and he was last heard from when he contacted EE customer services to top-up his mobile the following day.

Rickards told the court she had last seen her husband, who she had married in 1999, at the property on June 12 and thought he had left to visit his brother in the north east of England or travelled abroad to work.

But she said that within a week of his disappearance she believed he had killed himself, telling the court she “felt it deep, spiritually” and saying he had talked about suicide “many times.”

Rickards also told the jury his death had “destroyed” her life and left her “in dire straits.”

But she maintained throughout her evidence that she did not kill him and was not responsible for any injuries that the prosecution say had left Mr Rickards “battered and bruised” in his final days.

When asked about whether she saw any blood on her bedroom carpet “in quantities” that matched the staining on the underside found by forensic officers, she replied: “As I have told you before, Jeremy was not stabbed in that room.

“There is no proof Jeremy was stabbed one time in that room, let alone five times. The blood in that room is from just falling (by Jeremy). He would fall on the arm of the chairs, stacked luggage.

“There was never a pool of blood to show Jeremy had been stabbed one time, let alone five times.”

She also claimed a housemate was lying when he had told the court that he had heard “bumping” noises down the stairs and then Rickards standing in the garden in the early hours around the time of her spouse’s disappearance.

Following her arrest, police found two phones belonging to her husband at the multi-occupancy house.

One was in a ream of paper and another inside a plastic bag tied up in the curtains in the communal living room.

During her evidence, Rickards mentioned having called police in 2023 about her husband, only for her to be sectioned in what she called “the cuckoo house.” She also said it was “Kent Police’s fault” that her husband was dead.

On the subject of her videos, she broke down in tears and said having to watch them repeatedly in court was “like a horror movie.”

She told her barrister it was affecting her mental health and making her “sentimental and confused.”

One dated May 1 last year showed Mr Rickards sitting on the edge of the bed as his wife questioned him about moving his luggage from her cluttered room.

At the time, all the tenants in the multi-occupancy house had been asked to leave so it could be redecorated, and Rickards was in the process of packing up her belongings.

In what the prosecution say was “aggressive berating” of a “meek and kind” man, she could be heard in the footage - filmed with her phone held in his face and lasting more than two minutes - telling him to leave, saying: “I want you out of my energy so I can concentrate on saving my life.”

But having told the jury she was being “assertive”, she started to cry as she added: “If he had left he would be alive. There would be no ‘Who killed Jeremy?’

“Seeing that now makes me sad, confused, almost unable to continue. I called police to help and they sent me to the cuckoo house.

“If Jeremy had left when he was meant to have left, he wouldn’t be dead. He would be alive. I didn’t kill Jeremy and that’s the end of the story.

“I was just saying ‘Leave this house, leave my space’. Jeremy is dead and I see him there (in the footage) alive. It’s making me sentimental and confused.”

She also told the court that she would “get into trouble” if she did not leave the student house in July as the tenants had been requested.

In another outburst, she told the court: “He is better off dead. He has left me in the most dire of straits to face all this confusion.”

One video dated May 12 showed Mr Rickards lying on the floor of his wife’s room in a dishevelled state as she ordered: “Get this man out of my life. Get out, get out of my home. You will leave my home. Get up.”

She later added: “I’m done with this marriage. Somebody come and take this man to rehab. Get up Jeremy and leave my life. Get out. Enough is enough.”

The following week, staff at The Thomas Ingoldsby Wetherspoon pub in Canterbury had seen Mr Rickards in a "bruised and battered" state.

Giving evidence at the trial, bar worker Charley Hayes told the jury the pub regular – known as ‘The Ruddles Man’ due to his preferred choice of drink- had "quite severe" facial bruising and swelling.

She noted that he was "unusually" wearing sunglasses, and that he also showed her an injury to his arm.

"On going over to him he was very, very injured on his face. His eye on the right was very swollen and bruised," Ms Hayes told the court.

"He told me he had been in a car accident a couple of days ago (sic). I questioned him if he was driving. He said no, he was a passenger in a friend's car."

CCTV of Mr Rickards in the pub on May 17 and May 19, with visible injuries to his face, was shown to the jury.

Another video clip found on Ms Rickards’ phone, dated May 30, showed him on all fours, on the floor, struggling to get to his feet and failing. In many of the recordings he spoke little, if anything at all.

Rickards told the jury she had filmed him because she would wake to find him drunk and, without the proof to show him, he would deny he had behaved in such a way.

She also maintained that although she was “really stern” she was not aggressive and never hit him.

Of the fact she could be heard using the term “British boy” to address her husband in several clips, she told jurors it was a reference to “white privileged man” and had used it “for years”.

“When you have a disagreement with someone you have a right to express yourself,” she said, adding the footage transcript was inaccurate.

“It’s being misconstrued as I wanted to literally kill him as now he is dead,” she told the court.

The court has been shown a video made on July 3 of Rickards in her garden - a week after she had paid gardeners £20 to mow the lawn, telling them she would “deal” with the grass cuttings.

Much of the footage was sound and when Mr Henderson told his client it may be suggested by the prosecution that she could be heard covering the holdall in which Mr Rickards body was found with grass, Rickards replied: “So, I’m recording myself covering the bag with grass? Yeah, right. Next.

“If it’s not showing activity there are a billion suggestions. Am I so dumb I’m recording myself?”

Rickards accepted she sent messages to their daughter using her husband’s phone and saying he had arrived in Saudi Arabia.

But she said it was to find out what Chima and her father had been saying “behind her back”, and to “encourage” Chima to continue helping them with a house purchase.

Asked whether she was responsible for a message sent from her phone to Mr Rickards’s phone which read “Bye my angel. Have a great life because I most definitely will”, she told the court she did not remember.

The court heard the defendant, who had hoped to become a barrister when she finished her law degree, had messaged Chima on June 28 saying her father had killed himself due to her (Chima’s) “recklessness and betrayal.”

At the start of his cross-examination, prosecutor Nick Corsellis KC told the court Mr Rickards was 5ft 8in, weighed around 47kg when his body was found, had a failing hip replacement and such poor eyesight his bank card was “almost like brail” so he could read it.

He would drink alone, had few friends, and had not fallen out with anyone.

When he asked Rickards about the five stab wounds, she maintained she did not know “the circumstances” of him being stabbed or why.

Told by Mr Corsellis he had not died “accidentally”, she replied: “I don’t know, I wasn’t there. It depends what he walked into.”

Rickards then added after being questioned on her husband’s old and recent fractures to a neck bone that he “wanted to die and walked into something.”

During the trial, the court has heard that two fellow tenants, the owner of an Airbnb where Mr Rickards stayed between June 3 and 6, and a taxi driver who then took him back to St Martin’s Road, saw him with injuries including a large gash to his forehead, black eyes and a “cauliflower” ear as if he had been boxed.

Rickards said the cut was caused when her husband banged his head while staying at the rented accommodation.

But in response to the other injuries detailed by the prosecutor, she said: “Ask Jeremy. Resurrect him.”

Rickards denies murder between June 7 and July 11, and the trial continues.