Jealous husband 'used tracking device to find estranged wife - and paid thugs to beat her up'

Updated: 09:52 EST, 1 July 2008

A jealous husband placed a tracking device on his estranged wife's car in order to find her and have her savagely beaten up, a court heard.

Michael License, 55, used a magnet to stick the gadget to unfaithful wife Wendy's Peugeot 206 as she walked out of their home, the jury heard.

License, a senior manager for a haulage company, used the device to track her down to her new flat, jurors were told.

He is then said to have sent her a text message saying: 'Now you need some serious help - police, whatever - because you are going to get it big time … They're coming.'

Tracked down: Mrs License had made her new home in the Sandbanks, Poole, above

James Patrick, prosecuting, said one of the alleged attackers, Everton Bailey, 41, approached Mrs License days before the attack and told her: 'We have been paid a lot of money to do something to you and we don't want to do it.'

A tearful Mrs License, 55, told the court how she was dragged from her new home in Sandbanks, Poole, Dorset, by two men who bound her hands and mouth with tape and hacked off her hair with a razor.

She had just left her flat on December 19 for work when a man rushed towards her in a balaclava.

She said: 'He said, "Shut up," and put his hand over my mouth. He took me to an alleyway and told me to lay down on my stomach.

'A second person put his foot on my back to hold me down. The first man asked me to raise my head up and with that he used several pieces of tape to tape over my mouth and nose.

'My hands were put behind my back and taped up as well. Someone said that I had caused a lot of people a lot of trouble.

'Then one started punching me in the head and it seemed to happen for a long time. The second person started to kick me in the left side in my legs and kidney area.

'My hair was grabbed and then cut off. It felt like it was being cut with a big razor and the razor went into my scalp.'

She added that after she had struggled free she buzzed a neighbour's intercom and told them to call the police.

It is alleged that License had paid the pair 'a lot of money' to the men to carry out the assault.

When he was arrested police searched his rucksack and found a receipt for a tracker device, photos of his wife's car and a phone number for Bailey, it is claimed.

The couple - since divorced - had been childhood sweethearts since the age of 13 and had married at 17, going on to have two children - a daughter called Paula and a son, Barry, who was killed in a motorbike accident when he was 19.

Mr Patrick said Mrs License walked out the marital home in Witney, Oxfordshire, in September 2006, after their 37-year-old marriage broke down over two affairs she had had.

She had previously walked out and returned when the second affair was over. But this time she did not tell her husband where she was going.

She and a friend discovered a tracking device attached to her car on December 8, just 11 days before the attack, he added.

He said: 'She couldn't lock the car and what she discovered left her surprised.

'They together found that stuck with a magnet on her car was a tracking device.

'The tracking device was found to be registered to Michael License.

'In effect it was a mobile phone that if you send a message, pings it's location to a computer.'

A second tracking device registered to License was found taped to the spare wheel under Mrs License's car, the court heard.

License, from Brockwroth, Gloucs, and Bailey, from The Chase, Derby, deny conspiracy to inflict grievous bodily harm with intent.

Bournemouth Crown Court heard both men told police in interview that they had tried to trace the car but had not been involved in the assault.

A second attacker has not been found.

The jury has been told that last year License was jailed for eight months for harassing his estranged wife by sending her the text messages and placing the tracking device on her car.

At the time they split up the couple had run up £10,000 worth of credit card debt.

The court heard that License had previously had an affair and has now remarried.

The trial continues.