Like Horny Goats to the Slaughter

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The English are weird. I'm just going to put that right out there. Not that we don't have our own oddities, but you have to admit, this makes a whole lot more sense when you realize where it happened.

Joanne Hale, 39, gave her husband Peter an herb called horny goat weed before cutting his throat in woodland at Stoke Bishop, Bristol, on 27 December 2008.

Bristol Crown Court heard she then left the scene to have a romantic liaison with a man she had met on the internet.

Hale, of Stapleton, will be sentenced at a later date.

The trial jury heard that after taking the aphrodisiac, Mr Hale was led to the woodland by his wife believing they would have sex.

Instead Joanne Hale inflicted a 12cm (4.7in) cut to his throat and then stabbed him, leaving a wound to his chest which caused lung collapse, cardiac arrest and heart damage.

Christopher Armstrong, the surgeon who treated Mr Hale, said that he had come "close to death".

At least in America, we only use the internet to make asses out of ourselves because people are picking on Britney Spears, or to find our long-lost sons so we can sleep with them...like I said, the English are weird.

The rats told her to do it...

That horny goat weed must be some primo stuff, because I'm still trying to figure out at what point you don't tell someone there's no way you're going into the woods to have sex.

After the attack, she left Mr Hale in the care of a passer-by and went to Bristol Parkway railway station to meet Philip Sudol, a married postman from Leeds, with whom she had been having an internet relationship.

Mr Sudol told the court of his shock as he arrived back at the Hales' home in Hawksmoor Lane to be met by a large number of police.

"I heard the police say there had been some sort of incident, and she had been accused of being involved with that incident and they arrested her on attempted murder.

"A couple of minutes later someone came over and arrested me as an attempted murderer - I was quite taken aback by that. I'd been in Bristol for an hour, maybe less," he said.

Mr Sudol was subsequently released.

Joanne Hale declined to give evidence at her trial but she had told police that Mr Hale had cut his own throat after an argument.

She was convicted by a majority verdict.

I see, the old he-cut-his-own-throat-and-left-himself-for-dead defense. She probably should have doused him with petrol and set him on fire. The jury would have believed spontaneous combustion.