Terrified mum kissed children goodbye after abusive boyfriend wrote ‘mummy is dead’ on wall
Michelle Bielby was convinced she would be killed by menacing Jake Jones, 31, after he told her, ‘I’m going to put you in a grave’
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A terrified mum was forced to kiss her children goodbye after her abusive boyfriend scrawled “mummy is dead” on the wall, smashed plates and glasses, then grabbed her by the throat.
Michelle Bielby was convinced she would be killed by menacing Jake Jones, 31, after he told her, “I’m going to put you in a grave”.
The jealous NHS worker then repeatedly strangled the mum-of-two in a drunken rage at her home in Herne Bay, Kent.
Believing she was texting another man, Jones, who described himself as a “hermit”, warned her, “If I can’t have you, nobody will” before launching his attack.
He then wrote in crayon on the bathroom wall “mummy is dead tonight, rest in peace”.
The terrifying ordeal began last April when Jones had been drinking all day after finishing his night job cleaning operating theatres at a hospital.
When Miss Bielby arrived home he “called her a slag” after downing eight cans of beer.
Jones then picked up her dinner plate and slammed it on the side, grabbed her by the throat and pushed her against the microwave.
He repeatedly put his hands around her neck, smashed her perfume and drink glasses, cut up her debit card then damaged her phone charger and jumper.
Jones then grabbed her by the throat, threw her on the bed, asked where her windpipe was located and said if “I can’t have you nobody will”.
After the defendant fell asleep on the sofa the police were called.
After a trial, Jones was convicted in his absence at a magistrates court in September of making threats to kill, actual bodily harm and criminal damage.
At Canterbury Crown Court on Tuesday, Jones was jailed for two and a half years.
Following the sentencing, Miss Bielby said: “No sentence will ever be enough to erase the psychological trauma he put me and my babies through, but at least now we have closure and can continue to work towards moving on from it.
“Whether he did 15 months inside or five, that’s time me and the children can do things we haven’t been able to do in fear of coming in contact with him.”
Miss Bielby said that with Jones behind bars, she and her two young children can start to rebuild their lives again.
In a harrowing victim impact statement read to the court, Miss Bielby revealed: “I was forced to kiss my children goodbye because he was going to kill me.”
She described feeling a “shell of a person I did not recognise”, adding: “I lost who I was, I was an abused version of me.”
And she told how she felt gaslighted, “useless, stupid, disgusting, nobody else would ever want me”.
Prosecutor James Harrison told the court: “[Jones] picked up her dinner plate and slammed it on the side, grabbed her by the throat and pushed her against the microwave.”
At times, Miss Bielby appeared visibly distraught while attending the hearing remotely from another room inside the court building.
Jones, dressed in a dark top, could be seen fidgeting and repeatedly touching his face in the dock as the prosecution’s case unfolded.
Judge Simon James described the attack as “prolonged” and said he left Miss Bielby “genuinely believing you intended to kill her in her own home”.
He added: “When the neck is targeted, it is the potential of fatal harm that makes the nature of the attacks so serious.”
Charles Hannaford, defending, said Jones launched the “unexplained and inexcusable” attack after believing Miss Bielby was texting another man.
He said Jones describes himself as “a hermit character” without friends, who has stopped drinking cold turkey after realising he has an alcohol problem