Wife
tried to frame ex by text
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1496424,00.html
Times
- 23rd February 2005
The threats
sent by an embittered woman to herself were traced by phone technicians
A WOMAN sent threatening text messages to herself in an attempt
to frame her estranged husband as a potential killer.
Jennifer
Harris, 52, falsely claimed that her ex was threatening to kill
her after she sent texts to her own phone using an old SIM card
belonging to her estranged husband.
She sent
the messages while sitting in her car outside his new home, knowing
that technicians would be able to establish where the calls had
come from.
She did
not realise that technicians from the phone company Orange would
be able to establish that the texts were sent using her husband’s
SIM card, but her own handset.
One text
she sent herself said: “You’ll be looking over your
shoulder for the rest of your life.”
Her husband
was arrested and appeared in court charged with making threats to
kill.
Yesterday,
however, she was the one facing jail after pleading guilty at Cardiff
Crown Court to attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Her husband,
David Harris, also 52, said that his soon-to-be ex-wife hatched
the plot when the pair were going through a bitter divorce after
28 years of marriage.
He said:
“It was all because I wouldn’t take her back. I’ve
been through six months of sheer hell. I was arrested for the text
messages and she was still going to the police and making false
accusations against me.”
Mrs Harris
drove from her home in Barry, South Wales, to her husband’s
new home about six miles away and she took with her his old SIM
card. As she sat near his house, so that the signal could be traced
to his address, she put the card in her phone and sent herself four
messages.
Mr Harris
subsequently appeared before a magistrates’ court and the
Crown Court, where he denied making threats against his wife. The
charges were dropped after Orange checked its records and found
that the texts had been sent from Jennifer Harris’s handset
using his SIM card.
Yesterday
her barrister, James Cranfield, told Judge Philip Richards that
his client had had a long history of health problems.
Sentencing
was adjourned for four weeks for reports.
Outside
court, Mr Harris, the director of a commercial vehicle repair workshop,
said that his former wife had used the card from an old phone that
he had kept in a bedside table. He said: “The first I knew
of it was when officers called at the house. It left me in a terrible
state. I was taken to court for something I hadn’t done.
“I’m
sad that things have ended up this way between Jennifer and me,
especially for the kids, but I just want to put it all behind me
now.”
After the
case Jennifer Harris said: “I’ve got nothing to say.
I’ve been to court and pleaded guilty.”
96%
of women are liars, honest 9th December 2004
