A jilted lover broke into his ex girlfriend’s home and stabbed her in the breast just hours after walking free from court for harassing her.
Paul Henry, 46, plunged a 6in knife into former girlfriend Claire Boswell, 44, after a six-year terror campaign.
Shockingly, before the attack the mum-of-one made 40 complaints to police about Henry since 2005 which resulted in him being slapped with a restraining order.
But the day he walked free from court after he threatened to kill her Henry travelled to her home where he knifed her in a brutal attack.
Lincoln Crown Court heard that he climbed onto Miss Boswell’s roof on September 14 last year.
The next day he appeared at the city’s magistrates court where he was slapped with an eight-week prison sentence suspended for 12 months after he admitted breaching the restraining order.
But minutes after leaving the dock, warped Henry rang Miss Boswell from a phone box opposite the court and left a heavy-breathing message.
The court heard that he called her again from a mobile phone and when she answered he chillingly told her: “I’m out.”
Robert Underwood, prosecuting, said: “She answered, but the caller, this defendant, remained silent.
“A little later this defendant rang Claire Boswell again. He was using a mobile phone.
“When she answered that call this defendant said to her ‘I’m out’.”
The court heard that Henry then caught a train to the mum-of-one’s home in Gainsborough, Lincs., where he broke in by smashing a window with a plant pot.
Henry chased Miss Boswell upstairs and shouted: “I’m going to kill you.”
Mr Underwood said: “She retreated into her daughter’s bedroom but Henry clambered over the bed with a knife taken from her kitchen.
“He went into the bedroom where Claire Boswell was. She was pressing an alarm button that the authorities had provided for her on an earlier occasion.”
“Miss Boswell then dialled 999 and was heard shouting during the call: ‘Help! Get out!’
“Mr Henry was simply not deterred.”
Henry then thrust a kitchen knife into Miss Boswell’s right breast before fleeing.
The police arrived and arrested Henry nearby but when was quizzed by cops he denied trying to hurt Miss Boswell, telling officers: “I didn’t want to kill her or ‘owt like that.”
Miss Boswell was rushed to Lincoln Hospital with life threatening injuries before being transferred to Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham where she remained for five days.
The court heard the knife wound penetrated Miss Boswell’s breast tissue and injured her liver.
On Tuesday Henry was found guilty of attempted murder by a jury majority of 11 to 1 at Lincoln Crown Court.
Adjourning sentence until next month, Judge Michael Heath told Henry: “I am considering passing an indeterminate sentence for public protection.”
A Lincolnshire Police spokesman said after the hearing: “The victim in the case suffered at the hands of Henry for around a decade and we hope that today’s outcome gives her the opportunity to move on with her life.”
Yesterday it emerged Henry had a string of previous convictions for violence, including grievous bodily harm, assault and using a knife to cut the fingers of a male relative of his then girlfriend.
Henry even micro-waved his friend’s cat on July 26 last year, in what a judge said was the “worst case of animal cruelty he could imagine”.
