Husband Defends His Wife After She Slit His Throat and Ran Off with a Lover

Truth is stranger than fiction. After his wife stabbed him, left him for dead, and ran off to meet a new lover, the husband asked the court to go easy on her.

In this bizarre-but-true story from England, computer wizard Peter Hale begged the court to go easy on his wife Joanne. It wasn't her fault, Hale said, that she plied him with the "Horny Goat Weed" aphrodisiac drug, covered his eyes with a blindfold, led him into the woods, rolled around with him in the leaves - and then slit his throat, stabbed him repeatedly in the throat and chest, left him bleeding on the ground after being discovered by a passerby, and ran off, not wanting to be late for her planned rendezvous, her first face-to-face meeting with her internet lover.

The judge thanked Peter Hale for supporting his wife, and sentenced Joanne Hale to a mere six years in prison, with a possible release after three years.

You have to wonder, who are these people? Their internet trails give some clues. Joanne - or Jo, as she calls herself - writes poetry. She has a Squidoo page full of links to her poems, as well as a picture of herself with a couple of pet rodents (guinea pigs? rats?), one crawling on her shoulder, the other in her hand.

The pages she linked to have been pulled, but a visit to the Wayback Machine brings up her old poetry blog, where she posted a poem in September 2006 ironically - or prophetically - titled "Forbidden Love."

The poem begins: "Forbidden is my love for you / Though the feelings are deep and strong / You and I - we belong to another / So being here with you is so wrong." So wrong indeed!

As for Peter Hale, his Squidoo page says that in 2006, he was a researcher working on his PhD. He used "User Driven Modeling/Programming" techniques to "enable non-programmers to create software from a user interface that allows them to model a particular problem or scenario." Sounds like he's a super-brainy guy - except when it comes to his wife.