Britain’s longest-serving female prisoner, Maria Pearson, is to be released after a Parole Board panel concluded she no longer poses a risk to the public, nearly four decades after she murdered her love rival.
Pearson, now 70, from Hartlepool, Co Durham, was 31 when she fatally stabbed 23-year-old Janet Newton in 1986, leading to a life sentence the following year. The trial judge at the time described the killing as "cruel and vicious".
