A woman accused of seeking to hire a hitman to kill a former colleague has been found guilty of stalking him over two and half years.

Helen Hewlett, 43, is on trial for soliciting the murder of Paul Belton, 50, with whom she is said to have become “utterly fixated” after being spurned following a brief romantic fling.

Jurors at Norwich Crown Court found her not guilty of stalking causing alarm or distress but guilty of a lesser charge of stalking.  

But after 11 hours the jury of seven men and four women said they were unable to reach a verdict on the charge of soliciting murder.

Judge Katherine Moore urged them to continue their deliberations and said she would accept a majority verdict.

The 10-day trial has heard Hewlett placed Mr Belton’s details on a dark web site called Online Killers Market and transferred Bitcoin totalling £17,476 into a supposed Escrow holding account.

But in police interviews the married mother-of-five from King’s Lynn denied she had not intended to go through with it.