A MAN jailed for knifing a pub landlady to death on the orders of her scheming husband now faces a murder retrial next February.Richard Bates, 52, was locked up for life in June 2003 with former pub landlord James Garside, 55 for the murder of his estranged wife Marilyn Garside.

A MAN jailed for knifing a pub landlady to death on the orders of her scheming husband now faces a murder retrial next February.

Richard Bates, 52, was locked up for life in June 2003 with former pub landlord James Garside, 55 for the murder of his estranged wife Marilyn Garside.

An Old Bailey trial heard Garside paid his friend Bates £4,000 to stab Marilyn, 54, to death.

Serial love cheat Garside had planned to use the money from the sale of their jointly-owned Suffolk pub and insurance bonds to set up a jet-ski business abroad with his young mistress.

The court had heard how hours after the killing Garside sobbed uncontrollably as he faked heartbreak in front of his dead wife's son and daughter from her previous marriage.

Former secretary Marilyn married Garside in 1997 and bought the Cross Keys pub, in Redgrave, near Diss, which they ran together for four years.

When the marriage hit the rocks he moved in with a mistress, the court had heard.

Garside, of Ullster Avenue, South Wootton, King's Lynn, and Bakes, of Castle Acre Road, Great Massingham, Norfolk, were convicted of murder and jailed for life.

But Bates's murder conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Bates returned to the Old Bailey yesterdayto deny the murder of Mrs Garside via a live video link from Belmarsh Prison in Woolwich, south east London.

Wearing a striped shirt and light coloured jeans he spoke to confirm he understood the proceedings and answer "not guilty" to the charge.

Judge Paul Focke QC fixed his retrial for February 7, 2005.

Mrs Garside was knifed to death after answering the door at her elderly mothers' home at Rose Lane, Romford, Essex on October 2, 2001.

During the trial defence lawyers for Bates, who did not give evidence, claimed he was nowhere near the murder scene and had not visited the area for six years.