Additional reporting by Emily Stott

Killer Jonathon Cudworth has told a murder jury that he thought he would get away with stabbing his wife to death.

The 35-year-old said that after the attack he hid her corpse in a garden and then researched on an internet forensics site about the rate bodies decay.

Then he drove to Deal harbour and threw wife Mika’s handbag and mobile phone into the sea before cleaning his car and home.

The ex-soldier, who denies murder, told Canterbury Crown Court how he dragged Mika’s body into the boot of his car and dumped it in a field, where it was discovered days later.

He admitted telling lies by reporting her missing to police and then, together with friends, calling the mobile phone, despite knowing it was in the sea.

His barrister Oliver Saxby QC asked: “Were you thinking straight?”

"I thought I'd get away with killing my wife. I wasn’t thinking straight" - Jonathon Cudworth

Cudworth replied: “No, I wasn’t thinking straight.”

Under cross-examination, prosecutor Philip Bennetts QC, told how Cudworth had admitted telling his mother he thought he would get away with it.

Mr Bennetts: “What did you mean... get away with what?”

Cudworth: “Get away with killing my wife. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

The prosecutor said Cudworth had done everything he could to get away with stabbing his wife to death.

He asked: “You were thinking straight, weren't you? Everything you did was designed to throw the police investigation off course. Isn’t that true?”

Cudworth: “Yes”.

Mr Bennetts continued: “Your intention, wasn’t it, was to have a perfectly clean house that had no evidence that she had been killed there. To get rid of anything connected to the killing out of your house?”

Cudworth, who was dressed in a grey suit, white shirt and blue tie, answered: “Yes”.

He was then asked about claims that Mika had told friends that she had sex with her husband “once a month and only when I’m drunk”.

Cudworth admitted the couple didn’t have sex often but denied using violence or forcing himself on her.

“I admit I am sex mad. I like sex but I never pestered my wife," he said.

During April, after Mika had returned from a trip to Poland, Cudworth suspected she had started a relationship with a drinker in the pub where she worked as a barmaid.

He admitted tracking her via her iPhone and confronting her about the relationship on April 28 after Mika arrived home late from the pub.

Cudworth added: “I was a bit paranoid at that time and drinking quite a lot.”

The prosecution has claimed that during that late-night row, Cudworth murdered her by stabbing her four times with a kitchen knife.

The trial continues.