A man who threatened to kill an Oxford judge after his wife ran off with her boss escaped jail and was given two years probation.

Circuit judge Paul Clark, 57, presided over the county court matrimonial hearings of Anthony Stokes, 40, whose wife left him following their nine-year marriage.

Following the hearing last year, the defendant wrote to the judge and told him that he would "bide his time and await his moment" to kill him.

The Oxford Mail exclusively revealed in January that police stepped up security at the judge's north Oxford home following the letter. Judge Clark sits regularly at the city's courts.

Detectives launched a hunt for the mystery writer and Stokes was arrested shortly afterwards.

When Stokes admitted being the author at Stafford Crown Court yesterday , Mr Justice Latham accepted that it was the act of a "childish and immature" man and imposed a probationary sentence. Paul Bogan, defending, said Stokes, of Wimblebury, Staffordshire, became depressed and developed a lack of self-respect when his wife ran off with the managing director of the company where she worked. "There is no suggestion that the threat to kill would have been carried out," he said. Bernard Thorogood, prosecuting, said the offending letter was written in March last year but was not sent until just before Christmas.

It was unsigned but police traced it to the defendant by comparing the handwriting to legal documents he had completed.

Before sending the threat to kill, the defendant had already complained that the matrimonial hearings had been unfair.

Mr Justice Latham told Stokes that the normal sentence for making such a threat would be two years' imprison- ment.

But he sentenced him to two years of probation, noting that he had already served a significant period on remand.

The judge also ordered that he should undergo psychiatric treatment.

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