A woman battered her senile grandmother to death with a spade, then claimed voices in her head had told her to do it, a court heard yesterday.

Leeds Crown Court was told that Joanne Hussey was motivated by money when she murdered 77-year-old Annie Garbutt in her bed.

Hussey, 33, told a close friend she would punish her devoted grandmother by not visiting her if she refused to give money to her or her mother.

Prosecutor James Goss QC said Mrs Garbutt, a widow, died from multiple injuries after blonde, well-built Hussey had repeatedly struck her with a spade she had taken from her home in Grange Mount, Yeadon.

Mrs Garbutt, who was killed in the bedroom of her terraced cottage home in The Clough, Mirfield, in May last year, suffered multiple lacerations and fractures.

Mr Goss said Mrs Garbutt had suffered numerous facial fractures and internal head injuries. There had been blows to her neck, upper body and limbs and she had fractures to her larynx, ribs and breastbone.

She had suffered a number of injuries as she tried to defend herself and at some stage Hussey had been sitting or kneeling on her grandmother's chest.

Mr Goss said Hussey later accepted she unlawfully killed her grandmother but claimed to police she had heard voices in her head telling her to do so.

But the prosecutor told the jury: "We would ask you to examine with care whether she was inventing the voices as an excuse to provide a defence to what was a brutal murder committed for financial reasons."

Mr Goss said Mrs Garbutt owned her cottage outright and also had considerable savings.

She had suffered in recent years from dementia as a result of Alzheimer's disease and at the time of her death her condition had deteriorated and Social Services were recommending full-time residential care.

Mr Goss said: "This would have been costly but would have been funded from her savings and investments and, if necessary, from the sale of her house."

He said a year before Mrs Garbutt's death the defendant's mother, Maureen Hussey, had been given Power of Attorney over her mother's financial affairs.

Mr Goss alleged: "Over a year prior to Mrs Garbutt's death Maureen Hussey had withdrawn and transferred substantial sums from her mother's savings account and, we allege, had simply helped herself to her mother's money.

"You will hear evidence of the defendant being very financially motivated, describing being a party to what was going on, namely the taking of her grandmother's money."

Mr Goss said that at about 9.15am on Monday, May 7, last year, the defendant knocked on the door of a neighbour of her grandmother and said she had found her upstairs with blood on the walls.

Emergency services were called and Mrs Garbutt was found on her bed in two pools of blood.

Hussey, who worked for the Royal Mail and had a severely disabled 11-year-old daughter, claimed she had been suffering from a mental abnormality which substantially diminished her responsibility for her actions.

But Mr Goss said she had gone to considerable lengths to cover her tracks and she had been contemplating her grandmother's death for some time.

Mr Goss said Hussey's former partner and father of her child remembered her and her mother saying it would be best if Mrs Garbutt "just fell down some steps". And a week before the killing Hussey had sent a text message to a colleague saying: "Got to grandma's earlier and found her dead. Police have been and she's been taken away. Head totally done in."

Mr Goss said it was a "macabre way of seeking attention".

He said the prosecution accepted Hussey had suffered from depression and anxiety but it was not severe enough to cause abnormality of the mind.

"The evidence of hearing voices depends entirely on her own word and was something she only raised after the killing," he said.

Mr Goss said police searched the defendant's house and found a key to her grandmother's home and the spade, which she had tried to clean. She had either cleaned or disposed of most of her clothing but a white vest had spots of Mrs Garbutt's blood on it and the victim's blood was also found in the defendant's bath.

Hussey has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mrs Garbutt.

The trial continues.