An “utterly fixated” woman paid more than £20,000 to hire a hitman to kill a former work colleague after being spurned following a brief romantic fling, a court has heard.  

Helen Hewlett, 43, is on trial accused of stalking the fellow factory worker for more than two and a half years, including making false allegations of sexual harassment, before turning to the dark web to find someone to murder him. 

Norwich Crown Court heard the married mother used all her savings, overdraft and loans to buy Bitcoin so she could place an order on a site called 'Online Killers Market', which purported to supply hitmen.

Transferring £20,547 into an online account together with his name, home and work addresses and picture, she told his would-be killers “it’s vital it looks like an accident”, said prosecutors. 

After being arrested following a tip-off to police, she was found to have searched online for fatal accidents in Norfolk to see if the man's killing had been carried out.

Prosecuting, Marti Blair KC said Hewlett had met the man, who is also married with children, while working at the Linda McCartney frozen food factory at Fakenham.

She said her pursuit of him had been “relentless” after flirting between the pair had led to a single intimate encounter in a car which he had “immediately regretted”.

After he spurned efforts for the relationship to continue Hewlett had “become obsessed with him” and had begun bombarding him with emails and texts and posted messages about him on Facebook, said Ms Blair.

After he moved to another Fakenham factory, Kinnerton Confectionery - which makes chocolate products for Tesco - she also got a job there in order to pursue a relationship. 

Ms Blair said the man rearranged his work patterns to avoid her and blocked abusive messages and sexually explicit emails, the court was told.

She later lodged complaints with factory bosses and Tesco claiming he had bullied, intimidated and sexually harassed women and made homophobic comments.

Ms Blair said: “She was determined to ruin his reputation at work.” 

But after the complaints were deemed to be malicious he was advised to contact police.

The jury of seven men and five women was told that after her arrest over the murder-for-hire plot she had told police she had “no intention of going through with the order” and that she could withdraw funds from the 'dark' website at any time. 

But Ms Blair said: “These actions go far beyond mere fantasy.”

Hewlett, of the Hawthorns in King's Lynn, denies soliciting murder and stalking between January 2021 and August 2022.

The trial continues.