Sexy emails between a fiancee and an unknown woman in Las Vegas caused ex-Royal aide Jane Andrews to beat and stab her lover to death, the Old Bailey heard yesterday.

Jane, who was the Duchess of York's personal assistant for nine years, found the emails when long-term boyfriend Thomas Cressman was on a stag weekend. There were described in court as being "of a very sexual nature". One spoke of giving Cressman "kisses and licks in all the right places". Another saw Ms Andrews described as "like an old pair of slippers I can't get rid of".

Ms Andrews then fled the scene but was discovered by police three days later in a layby near Plymouth, having taken an overdose of painkillers.

The prosecutor, Bruce Holden QC said: "She realised that their relationship was simply not going to last and her hopes of marriage to him were evaporating. As the hope went out of the relationship, so the anger and jealousy rose up in her and led her to take a terrible revenge on the man she loved. Here we have a usually friendly and decent woman who was so transformed and burnt up inside that she killed."

Ms Andrews denies murder but the prosecution claims that in the time it took her to go downstairs to pick up a knife was enough to "put a brake on her emotions". The trial continues. ®