THE wife of a convicted killer will appear in court accused of benefit fraud over money allegedly paid to her estranged husband while he was living abroad.
Mother-of-four Anne Marie Oates is due to appear before North Tyneside Magistrates' Court on January 24.
The charges relate to more than £10,500 in Disability Living Allowance paid between 1994 and 2006 to her husband, Richard Monteith, who is serving a 16-year sentence for the murder of a wealthy widow in Spain.
Ms Oates, a 52-year-old grandmother, was arrested by police at Newcastle Airport on December 18.
Ms Oates, originally from Whitley Bay, North Tyneside, moved to Spain with her husband in 2000 and opened a bar on the Costa del Sol.
However, Mr Monteith, a former miner and car salesman, was arrested and later convicted of the murder of Sheffield-born pensioner Diana Dyson, a friend of the couple.
The pensioner, who had been married fives times, was strangled and battered to death at her luxury apartment in Torremolinos in March 2002.
Spanish police suspected the motive for the murder was theft, and more than 170 items of jewellery were discovered to be missing from the 67-yearold's flat.
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