Snooker star's mum jailed for life

Snooker pro Mark King today saw his mother jailed for life at the Old Bailey for a murder she had pretended was a suicide.

Sandra King, 62, plunged a knife through the heart of her cousin, cancer victim Jacqueline Oberlin, in a drunken row.

Mark King, once ranked number 11 in the world, was expressionless in the public gallery as his mother burst into tears in the dock. She shouted: "I don't deserve it."

During the week-long trial, Mrs King had claimed her 68-year-old victim committed suicide because she was due to have surgery and was terrified about dying in hospital.

But the jury took less than three hours to find unanimously that she had committed murder in her cousin's Dagenham flat in February.

Judge Giles Forrester told the weeping mother: "You have been convicted on evidence which seems to me to be plain because there is no doubt whatever that you took the life of your own cousin - a frail, elderly and defenceless lady - by stabbing her through the heart as she lay on her bed in her own home where you were a guest.

"You denied that you had done that but, having heard the whole of this case, I believe in your heart of hearts you knew what you did."

Mrs King, of Romford, was trapped when she forgot to replace the receiver after dialling 999 to report what she described as the suicide.

The call to the emergency operator was still being taped when she said to herself: "I f*****g killed her," and: "She f*****g deserved it."

Mark King announced his retirement from snooker in April to support his mother after she was charged with murder. However, he returned to the game and was knocked out in the first round of the LG Trophy yesterday. As he left court, Mr King refused to comment.