Jennifer Harris, 52, falsely claimed that her ex was threatening to kill her after she sent texts to her own phone using an old SIM card belonging to her estranged husband.

She sent the messages while sitting in her car outside his new home, knowing that technicians would be able to establish where the calls had come from.

She did not realise that technicians from the phone company Orange would be able to establish that the texts were sent using her husband’s SIM card, but her own handset.

One text she sent herself said: “You’ll be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life.”

Her husband was arrested and appeared in court charged with making threats to kill.

Yesterday, however, she was the one facing jail after pleading guilty at Cardiff Crown Court to attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Her husband, David Harris, also 52, said that his soon-to-be ex-wife hatched the plot when the pair were going through a bitter divorce after 28 years of marriage.

He said: “It was all because I wouldn’t take her back. I’ve been through six months of sheer hell. I was arrested for the text messages and she was still going to the police and making false accusations against me.”

Mrs Harris drove from her home in Barry, South Wales, to her husband’s new home about six miles away and she took with her his old SIM card. As she sat near his house, so that the signal could be traced to his address, she put the card in her phone and sent herself four messages.

Mr Harris subsequently appeared before a magistrates’ court and the Crown Court, where he denied making threats against his wife. The charges were dropped after Orange checked its records and found that the texts had been sent from Jennifer Harris’s handset using his SIM card.

Yesterday her barrister, James Cranfield, told Judge Philip Richards that his client had had a long history of health problems.

Sentencing was adjourned for four weeks for reports.

Outside court, Mr Harris, the director of a commercial vehicle repair workshop, said that his former wife had used the card from an old phone that he had kept in a bedside table. He said: “The first I knew of it was when officers called at the house. It left me in a terrible state. I was taken to court for something I hadn’t done.

“I’m sad that things have ended up this way between Jennifer and me, especially for the kids, but I just want to put it all behind me now.”

After the case Jennifer Harris said: “I’ve got nothing to say. I’ve been to court and pleaded guilty.”

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