A "manipulative, emotionally volatile and jealous" woman who stabbed her ex-partner in the heart on Christmas Day while on police bail for strangling him the month before has been found guilty of his murder.
Kirsty Carless, 33, plunged a knife into 31-year-old Louis Price's heart in the early hours of December 25 2024, in an attack "motivated by anger and jealousy and fuelled by cocaine and alcohol" after a friend sent her a picture of his Tinder profile, Stafford Crown Court heard.
On Wednesday, after around a day of deliberation, a jury of seven men and five women found her guilty of murder and possession of an offensive weapon by unanimous verdicts in relation to the fatal stabbing.
She was also found guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm by a majority of 11 to one in connection with an incident in November 2024.
She was cleared of intentional strangulation in relation to the same incident.
The trial was told Carless, of Haling Way in Cannock, Staffordshire, had been at the pub drinking double vodka and cokes with a male friend on December 24.
She later had sex with the male three times at his home before a female friend sent her a screenshot of Mr Price's Tinder profile at around 1.30am on Christmas Day, which left her angry.
Carless then left the male friend's home, took a taxi back to her house, where she picked up a kitchen knife and got another taxi to Mr Price's parents' address in Elm Road, Norton Canes, where she expected to find him with a woman.
CCTV showed her running up the front path into the house and then "stalking" him around the garden before he was later found with a single stab wound to the chest on the conservatory floor.
Carless had called Mr Price 45 times between 2.15am and 2.44am while she waited for the taxi to take her to the address where he had been staying since their relationship ended – only breaking up what prosecution counsel Jonas Hankin KC called the "barrage" of calls to impatiently phone the company to check where her taxi was.
After arriving at the address, Carless asked the taxi driver to wait outside while she went into the property to stab Mr Price at around 3am.
The taxi driver reported that around 30 seconds after Carless let herself into the property with a key, he heard a "very loud and prolonged" scream from a man and that he "sounded scared".
Less than two minutes after arriving at the scene, Carless was "anxious and sweating" as she got back into the taxi and demanded the driver take her to her parents' home, where she admitted what she had done and 999 was called.
Father-of-six Mr Price had been considered by police to be "at very high risk of domestic abuse" and Carless was on police bail at the time of the fatal stabbing after strangling Mr Price on November 11 2024.
On that occasion, Mr Price phoned 999 to say Carless had poured bleach over tracksuits worth £400 after she put them in the bin, had thrown a glass candle holder at him, pulled him down the stairs and choked him.
He was seen crying on police body-worn video footage, telling the officer: "It's f****** embarrassing… it can't keep happening, man."
In a witness statement after the incident, he said the relationship, which started in 2021, had been "on the whole, abusive", that she had stopped him doing things he liked, such as playing football and had physically abused him.
The trial was told of several previous incidents in which the police had been called, including an incident on March 5 2023, in which Carless had said Mr Price had punched her and been violent and he was arrested, before later retracting her statement.
A neighbour had recalled seeing Carless hitting Mr Price with a metal pole in the ribs outside her house on a different occasion.
'Scared'
Mr Price's friend, Demi-Louise Deakin, also told the trial he had confided in her about his on-off relationship with Carless when they attended a funeral at the end of November 2024, telling her he was "scared of Kirsty" and feared "something bad would happen" if he did not leave her.
In her evidence to the trial, Carless said she had no recollection of stabbing him, was "not a violent person" and had only gone to Mr Price's address as she believed he had taken money from inside a card she had in her home.
She said she picked up a knife with the intent to destroy the caravan he was staying in in his parents' back garden and had "panicked" after Mr Price was stabbed and fled.
Judge Mr Justice Choudhury thanked the jury for their service and said Carless would be sentenced on Thursday.
