A TOP hospital scientist anaethestised his wife then smothered her with a cushion to avoid paying a £60,000 divorce settlement, a court was told.

Andrew Booth, 44, took a bottle of enflurane from Doncaster Royal Infirmary where he was head of biomedical sciences and allegedly used it to knock out Lorraine Booth before suffocating her on July 11.

Sheffield Crown Court was told how Booth told friends and family that Lorraine, 50, was an alcoholic and he allegedly spiked her drinks to make her appear drunk.

When she died he called the police and told them she suffocated herself while drunk by falling asleep face down on the sofa at their home on Tankersley Lane, Hoyland Common.

It was only when her family raised questions that a second post mortem was carried out and traces of the drug were found in her body.

The couple had separated but Lorraine, a barmaid at the Hare and Hounds, Hoyland Common, would often visit the house to see her two children, aged 12 and 21.

Jeremy Richardson, prosecuting, said Booth told work colleagues about the couple's unhappy marriage and how he could not afford to pay the settlement.

Booth allegedly told them he did not expect Lorraine to live to see the money because of her alcoholism, stating “she hasn't got long, she has really not got long.”

He told another workmate he “must look suspicious” and that he knew what her family would say and another that he kept waking up with a vision of his hands over Lorraine’s face.

On July 19 Booth told police he had come downstairs and found Lorraine dead on the couch and raised the alarm.

But the next day he said in a police statement: “I have had a greater hand in my wife's death then I have so far admitted,” and “I can’t keep on lying.”

He said: “I just got hold of the dust cloth that I presumed Lorraine had used. I put it onto her face. I just wanted her to shut up, I just wanted her to stop going on at me, no more than that.”

Booth pleaded not not guilty to murder at an earlier hearing.

The trial continues.