A husband murdered his estranged wife when he created a "death trap" by setting fire to a pub while she was asleep upstairs, a jury heard.

Jason Hall, 34, has admitted starting the blaze, at the Chevin Inn near Guiseley, that killed licensee Sarah Thrippleton Hall on Good Friday.

He told police he lit a small fire on the outside of one of the pub's doors but thought it would simply burn itself out.

But Benjamin Nolan QC, prosecuting, told Bradford Crown Court yesterday that door was the only one of four with a letter box and the only one that gave access to the living quarters where he said Hall knew Mrs Thrippleton Hall would be.

Hall has pleaded guilty to manslaughter but Mr Nolan told the jury the crown did not accept his account of how the fire started and said there was an alternative explanation: lighter fuel could have been squirted through the letter box to start a fire in the pub. He said "The Crown alleges this was murder not manslaughter. This was a deliberate attempt to kill the deceased or at least cause her very serious harm."

The court was told the couple had borrowed money to buy the licence on the Chevin Inn around the time they got married in November, 2003.

But the relationship became volatile and sometimes violent, Mr Nolan said, before Hall moved out of the pub in an acrimonious split in May 2005. He had been living in a flat in Otley and had been resentful that Mrs Thrippleton Hall was still living in the pub, it was claimed.

In the days before the killing, the jury was told, Hall had told friends he had been up to the pub looking for a petrol can as he wanted to burn the place down. Then in the early hours of April 14, after spending the night in a couple of pubs in Otley town centre, Hall returned to his flat and filled up his Zippo lighter with lighter fuel and walked to the Chevin Inn.

After sitting on a wall in the pub car park he started the fatal blaze at about 2am. Police and fire crews were called by passing motorists but by the time they arrived the building was well ablaze.

When the emergency services went inside they found Mrs Thrippleton Hall's body next to a closed window in the bedroom. A post-mortem examination revealed she died of smoke inhalation. Hall, who denies murder, was arrested by police the same day.

When first interviewed he claimed he had been asleep in bed at the time the fire was started but eventually confessed to starting the blaze. He claimed he thought it would burn a little bit before going out.

He told police when interviewed: "I just wanted the door to set on fire. I just wanted it to burn a little bit. I was not expecting it to take the whole pub up with it."

Hall, now of Scotton Grove, Knaresborough, said his reason for starting the fire was to make his wife think about things and to give her "a nudge" to try to get things sorted out.

In his opening speech to the jury, Mr Nolan said: "We say this was not manslaughter but murder because the fire was designed and intended to destroy the Chevin Inn at a time when Sarah was in it.

"This door and this stairwell were, as he well knew, his estranged wife's only means of escape and in setting this fire where he did the defendant literally created a death trap."

The trial continues.

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