Love triangle axe killer admits responsibility for first time

Axe murderer Nicola Puddicombe weeps and weeps – for herself. Certainly not, it seems, for the boyfriend she conspired to bludgeon to death.

Finally, after 19 years of proclaiming her innocence, she admits publicly for the first time that she did encourage her female lover to kill Dennis Hoy, her partner of 11 years.

And with this late-in-the-day confession, the woman serving life for first-degree murder tearfully appeared before a jury to win a chance to apply for parole sooner than the minimum 25 years – a “faint hope” hearing abolished for lifers convicted after 2011.

The tears came mainly when Puddicombe, 52, was asked by her lawyer Mitchell Huberman to describe her childhood – dad beat mom after they moved here from the U.K. – her diagnosis and difficult treatment for Hodgkin lymph