A jury considering whether a woman stabbed to death in a car park of a Maidstone prison was murdered by her obsessed ex-lover has been sent home.

Judge Michael Lawson QC stopped the deliberations of the nine men and three women at Maidstone Crown Court at 4pm on Friday. They will resume at 10am Monday.

Teacher Louise Evans, 48, was knifed 43 times during the frenzied attack outside East Sutton Park open prison in September last year.

The mother-of-two taught English to foreign inmates at the prison and had just finished a day's work. It is alleged that 49-year-old Keith Prest lay in wait for her.

The court heard that all of Miss Evans' major organs - heart, left lung, liver, spleen and kidneys - were penetrated. Her body lay undiscovered for an hour before being found by another worker at the women's prison.

Prosecutor Alan Kent said that three-times married Miss Evans, from Hothfield, near Ashford, met Prest in September 2005 through text dating.

Within two weeks they were living together, but the relationship was soon beset by violence and Prest became "controlling and obsessive". The couple split in the summer of last year.

The jury of nine men and three women heard in the days leading up to the killing Prest made numerous phone calls to Miss Evans and left notes on her car and at her home. At the time of the alleged murder he was on bail, having been accused of assaulting her.

Prest, of no fixed address, denies murder, claiming he was not the attacker. Prest did not give evidence during the trial.

There were no witnesses to the stabbing and the scene was not covered by CCTV. Two inmates described hearing screams around the open jail about the time Miss Evans was killed.

One said she was watching an episode of Midsomer Murders when she heard three screams, one of them "piercing", and the words: Get off me, get off me."