A horse trainer was today cleared of murdering her boyfriend and trying to cover up the evidence by burning his body on a bonfire.
Attractive Kirsti Windsor, 38, was accused of killing David Langdon, 40, and setting fire to his corpse at their country home.
The jury were told how she and pal Katie Brown sipped red wine on the patio as they watched Mr Langdon’s body go up in flames.
But today a jury at Worcester Crown Court took just three hours to find Miss Windsor not guilty of murder or manslaughter after a six-week trial.
Kirsti was also cleared of attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Miss Brown, 31, was found not guilty of perverting the course of justice.
The court heard Miss Windsor’s four-year relationship with Mr Langdon broke down after a series of violent rows.
She booted him out of their remote cottage they shared and went to stay with friends in the Lake District.
But when she returned to Wood Cottage, in Wormelow, Herefordshire, on August 9, 2008 she discovered his charred body lying on the fire.
She wept as she told the jury how her dog Molly sniffed around his remains on the fire.
She said: ”I saw something. I thought it was a head. I just turned around and ran back into the house screaming.
”I just fell in a heap on the floor and started crying. I just cried for hours and hours.”
Miss Windsor told the jury she rang her mother in France and told her she thought she had found Mr Langdon’s body but was not ”100 per cent sure”.
She then rang friends and told them there was ”something vile” at their home before dialling 999 and telling police he had committed suicide.
Witnesses from the village told the court they had seen plumes of smoke coming from the couple’s back garden and rancid fumes which smelt like ”burning bones”.
Miss Windsor and Miss Brown refused to comment outside court today.