A WOMAN who was arrested by police after she told her psychiatrist during a consultation that she wanted to kill her ex-husband s wife was cleared today of making a threat to kill her. Patricia Green was astonished when she was arrested. But a jury believ

A WOMAN who was arrested by police after she told her psychiatrist during a consultation that she wanted to kill her ex-husband's wife was cleared today of making a threat to kill her.

Patricia Green was astonished when she was arrested.

But a jury believed her account that she had never intended to kill her ex-husband's wife and had said it as a figure of speech.

At Luton Crown Court, Miss Green, 58, and a mother-of-two, was cleared of one offence of making a threat to kill on February 28 last year.

During her trial, psychiatrist Dr Leon Van Huyssteen said he had been so alarmed by the disclosure that he decided to breach the rules concerning patient confidentiality and informed his manager at the clinic where he worked.

Dr Van Huyssteen, who was treating Miss Green for a paranoid personality disorder, said he discovered from her during their 15-mminute consultation that she planned to "stake out" her ex-husband George's home and then call at the front door when he had left.

He said Miss Green went on to tell him how she saw herself sitting over the body of the wife, Mrs Elizabeth Goble, and had even planned how her make-up would look.

"I recall she said she would kill her with her bare hands," he told the jury.

But giving evidence, Miss Green, who has been divorced from her husband since the early 1980s, said: "My intention was just to get some help, not to be taken seriously that I would murder anybody. It was just an angry figure of speech."

She added: "I wanted him to see there was a problem. I wasn't going to harm anybody. Not then, not now."

The court heard how Miss Green, of Robert Tebutt Court, Wratten Road West, Hitchin, had gone for a consultation to a clinic in Hitchin as part of her on-going treatment.