THE ex-wife of millionaire businessman Ian Workman embellished a final diary entry just before she was stabbed in her kitchen, a court has heard.

Susan Workman, aged 55, is said to have made a live account of a furious row between the pair, which ended in her receiving a single stab wound to the chest.

A jury at Preston Crown Court has been told garage owner Ian Workman, aged 58, picked up a knife in anger and attacked her as they rowed about money following their acrimonious divorce.

Workman, of Vale Street, Turton, who denies murder, claims she came at him “flailing” with the knife and he tried to disarm her before she fell to the floor at their farmhouse.

In his police interviews, read in court, Workman denied he was in the room when she typed her last sentence.

Workman agreed the description of their conversation was “relatively accurate” but she had embellished it by lying he was swearing.

The defendant, who said he could not even remember seeing her use the laptop at the time, said his former wife of 34 years had embellished “other things” previously to show him “in a bad light”.

The couple had been involved in a bitter financial dispute stretched across several court hearings.

Workman, who denies murder, has told the court his wife came at him with the knife and he used his knowledge of martial arts to protect himself.

He claims Mrs Workman was stabbed during this manoeuvre.

A pathologist has told the court it is “unlikely” Mrs Workman delivered the fatal blow to herself.

Pathologist Naomi Carter said: “Mrs Workman’s arm would have had to be bent right in order for the knife to not be deflected so she would had to have held on to it very firmly indeed.

“I think the scenario of her stabbing herself as very unlikely.”

The Workman’s divorce became final in December last year, and then at the final court hearing before her death Mrs Workman applied for their house at Nursery Old Farm, Plantation Road, to be transferred into her name solely as part of a £1.4 million settlement out of total assets of £2.5 million.

(proceeding)

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