'VOICES’ told Charice Gassmann to ‘slice’ Alison Connolly moments before she took a knife and stabbed the 49-year-old mum through the heart, a court heard.

“The thoughts I had been having beforehand at my sister’s house before I left were to go and slice her the way she hurt me,” the 19-year-old told the jury at Bristol Crown Court on the opening day of her defence.

Charice, 19, and older sister Amberstasia, 23, both deny the murder of Alison Connolly, while the former admits manslaughter.

Their parents, who have been sitting in the public gallery throughout the trial, left as their daughter took to the stand rather than watch her give evidence.

The court heard that Charice had been affected by the death of her maternal grandfather the day before the incident at Evelyn House.

“You accept that you killed Alison Connolly,” said Alastair Malcom, prosecuting. “You had no justification for that and you killed her unlawfully.

“Did you decide to get the knife from your sister’s house? Can you remember going along making threats towards Alison, saying you were going to kill her?

“Do you remember shouting out, ‘get the machete’?”

“To be honest I don’t really know what a machete is,” she said. “I knew I would be safe from Alison at my sister’s house.”

The jury were also told of ongoing mental health and anger issues which had started for Charice at the age of 13 or 14, including the ‘voices’ in her head. She told the court she has smoked cannabis every day as a coping mechanism.

“I just started smoking cannabis when I was 14 to deal with it,” she said. “When I started it was just for fun, but it dulled my brain. If I do not smoke I get angry and really agitated.”

“Sometimes I have got a short fuse,” she admitted. “The first place I go is cannabis. If I do not have cannabis I will repeat myself over and over again telling the person to shut up.”

“Do you have issues with voices?” Adam Vaitilingham, defending Charice, asked her.

“Roughly since I was about 17,” she said. “One of them is sarcastic and the other one is just angry. At times it is not just thoughts, and I am actually hearing them.

“One is deeper than the other, so I think of the other as female. Some are deep and rough, and the others are calm and collected, but more sarcastic. They just kick in whenever they feel like it, near enough every day. I just try to block it out.

“I have given them names so I can tell the difference. The female tries to calm me down, but the male tries to wind me up. I smoke cannabis because I find it easier to block them out and not to listen.”

Charice also told the court she had seen Alison for the first time the day before the stabbing, during a "pathetic girls' argument".

On Tuesday, May 12, she was woken by a phone call to say coleslaw had been smeared over a window of the flat at Evelyn House where she was staying with friend Danielle.

She told the jury she remembered very little after the head-butt from Alison in the Premier Store, and could not recall anything after banging at her sister’s door on Hartland Close.

“The next thing I remember is her saying ‘she’s stabbed me,” Charice said.

“I remember looking down at my hands in shock, and walking backwards to Danielle and going into her flat.”

“From the CCTV it looks like you punch Alison in the head, take out the knife, then stab her,” said Mr Vaitilingham.

Charice agreed.

The court had previously heard from Det Sgt Liz Coles, officer in the case, that 30 separate knives were found in and around Evelyn House, hidden in bushes and shrubbery, during their enquiries.

Two were analysed as matching descriptions given by witnesses at the scene, but no traces of blood were found on them.

The jumper Charice had been wearing on the day in question was also shown to the jury, spattered with blood across the chest.

The trial continues.