SPURNED wife Rena Salmon accomplished her mission to kill her rival in love with chilling deliberation, the Old Bailey heard.

"We suggest she did what she intended to do and there was a deliberation about it," said Peter Clarke, prosecuting, in his closing speech to the jury.

"You have to decide the intention of the defendant. Once you consider the evidence as a whole it is quite clear she went in to kill her rival. She was not going to kill herself.

"There were two deliberate shots and then she smoked two cigarettes. She was quite matter of fact about what she had done."

Salmon, formerly of Burnley, and who still has family in the town, called the ambulance service and told them "I have just shot my husband's mistress", the court has heard.

Mr Clarke said: "I suggest that the method of delivery of that telephone call was quite chilling. It was not someone suffering mental abnormality, but someone who knew what she had done and was aware of the consequences.

"She sat there texting her acquaintances that her mission had been accomplished.

"Of course she was angry and irrational - but that is not abnormality of mind."

Salmon, 43, of Great Shefford, Berkshire, denies murdering her husband's lover Lorna Stewart, 36, at Miss Stewart's beauty salon on September 10 last year.

The court has heard defence psychiatric evidence that when Salmon shot Miss Stewart with a double barrelled shotgun she was suffering from an abnormality of mind which would have diminished her responsibility.

If accepted it would mean she was guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter not murder.

Salmon told the court in her defence that she went to the salon, Equilibrium, in Chiswick High Road, west London, intending to commit suicide - not kill her close friend.

She had discovered Miss Stewart was having an affair with her husband Paul. She has explained to the jury that she had chosen to end her life at her younger rival's beauty salon as "no-one would want to use a centre where someone had blown their brains out".

(Proceeding)