Woman tried to kill lover’s wife with carving knife hidden in bouquet of flowers
A maths teacher threw on a red wig and bought a bouquet of flowers for the wife of a man she was having an affair with before trying to kill her.
Clare Bailey, 44, drove from her house to the woman’s family home in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, to carry out the attack on June 23 2022.
At just before 5pm, the woman, 43, opened the front door to find Bailey standing there – but little did she know that hidden in the flowers was a carving knife.
Bailey set upon the victim, stabbing and slashing the woman’s neck, chest, stomach and arms as her terrified teenage daughter watched on.
The woman, named by police as ‘Emma’, attempted to defend herself to no avail.
She was taken to hospital for a month and required several surgeries, North Yorkshire Police said on Friday.
Bailey had been having an affair with Emma’s husband, Leeds Crown Court heard.
She mailed the man flowers and a handwritten note claiming that his wife was cheating on him in a bid to get him to divorce her.
Instead, the man ended his relationship with Bailey and blocked her on all social media.
Bailey phoned in sick on the morning of the blood-thirsty attack and drove from her home in Pedmore, grabbing some flowers from a Sainsbury’s on the way.
She fled on foot after the attack, which was captured in grisly detail by Emma’s Ring doorbell camera, before being arrested on July 25.
Emma said her daughter, 14, came downstairs and tried to put herself between her mum and Bailey.
‘When she was behind me, and she was trying to cut my throat and that was the point that I knew that if I didn’t do anything then I wasn’t going to survive,’ she said between sobs in a video shared by the force.
‘So I grabbed the knife with my hands and then clung onto it and it stopped her.’
Her daughter, she added in a statement, was a ‘hero’.
‘She will always be my little hero, I honestly don’t think I would still be here if she hadn’t been home that day,’ Emma said.
Nearly a year on, Emma still takes daily painkillers and uses crutches to get around as she is unable to use her right leg fully.
‘I’ve lost all my independence, I couldn’t go back to work, we are having to rely on disability benefits, I have just lost my whole life really, I need help with everything I do,’ she said.
‘I don’t sleep and when I do sleep, I have flashbacks and nightmares of that afternoon.’
Bailey pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 22 years and four months behind bars on Friday.
Senior Investigating Officer Jonathan Sygrove said that she hopes the sentencing will provide Emma and her loved ones with ‘closure’.
‘This was a horrific attack on an innocent and blameless lady who is now unable to feel safe in her own home, work, or spend time independently with her children, as a result,’ she said.
‘Emma had to spend weeks in hospital away from her family receiving treatment for injuries which simply, should never have happened.
‘All she did was open the front door to her home.’
‘Affairs happen, they aren’t nice, but they happen and no-one would ever imagine something like this would be the outcome,’ Emma added, ‘this was not a normal reaction to someone breaking up a relationship.’
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