In a strange twist of things, a cheating husband and his mistress allegedly used morphine to drug his wife’s drink so they could access her phone and find out if she was also having an affair.

42-year-old Richard Gell planned to use his wife’s fingerprint to unlock her phone to see if she had exchanged messages with another man after she gets knocked out by morphine.

Prosecutors said that Gell’s 30-year-old mistress Jessica Coote-Sellers got the drugs for him and the pair swapped messages while they doped up the unsuspecting victim.

However, Gell could not prise his wife’s hands apart to unlock her phone.

Michael Bosomworth, prosecuting, said sent a picture of the wife apparently sleeping to Coote-Sellers after he had drugged her.

The court heard it was a ‘complete gamble’ that could have resulted in an overdose.

Mr Bosomworth said:

“Neither defendant knew how the victim would react [or] what dose to administer. There could have been catastrophic consequences.”

Coote-Sellers, who shared the couple’s home, told Gell’s wife about the plot two years later, when both women had ended things with him.

The court that their ‘menage-a-trois’ came to an end following Gill’s acrimonious split with Coote-Sellers, who described him as ‘controlling and coercive’.

For the next few years, the two women kept in touch and in January 2019, Coote-Sellers told the victim: ‘I can tell you something, but it will probably land me with a charge.’

She said Gell had drugged the victim because he was jealous about a ‘supposed affair’ and that he wanted to find proof by looking at her text messages.

Mr Bosomworth added:

“Gell’s intention was to render the victim unconscious and get her hands apart, put her finger on the phone, examine the phone and get proof of an adulterous affair.

“This is somewhat hypocritical given the fact that Gell himself was in an adulterous relationship with Coote-Sellers.”

Mr Bosomworth said the wife told police she felt ‘degraded’ and ‘violated’ when she was told of the incident.

He said that she told officers:

“It makes me feel violated. I can’t understand why they did it.”