A grieving widow has told of her fury after discovering the man who killed and mutilated her husband over nine years ago is set to be released within days.

Linda Green, 65, says her life has been “totally destroyed” and turned upside down after James Spencer bludgeoned her soulmate Peter Green to death with a spanner on the evening of October 19, 2008.

Mr Green had been house-sitting for Spencer’s mother in Lidgett Lane, Skelmanthorpe, when Spencer used a 14ins tool to beat the popular and slightly built 67-year-old to death.

Alcoholic Spencer, who used to play tuba in Honley Brass Band, then repeatedly stabbed and cut the dead body with a kitchen knife.

Mrs Green, a retired nurse who still lives in the marital home and who was married to Peter for 28 years, says she was on holiday in Spain on the afternoon of Wednesday, August 1, when she received a text message from a police liaison officer telling her something was afoot.

The fateful text message telling Linda of Spencer's imminent release

Linda said: “I felt physically sick. I just couldn’t believe it. I thought it was my friend Jean to ask me if I was enjoying myself.

“I was supposed to go out with the girls the next day, some ladies I had met over there. They could tell I had been crying. I told them ‘that thing’, (Mrs Green is incapable of pronouncing Spencer’s name and can’t bear to look at newspaper photographs of him), who killed my husband is to be released.

“But to be quite honest I have been expecting this from the word go. I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“There is no justice, just ridiculous do-gooders who have no idea of the destroyed lives left behind existing in a constant nightmare – dead but still breathing, nothing to live for, just total emptiness, no purpose, no reason, nothing but that thing still has his life in front of him, he is only in his mid-30s.

The incident at Lidgett Lane, Skelmanthorpe.

“He is not allowed to go to Skelmanthorpe but can go to Denby Dale, the next village, (just a few miles away). No one is safe. He is totally unpredictable, a drug user and alcoholic and very dangerous, has no emotions, just pure evil through and through his entire body.”

The 2010 trial heard in the days leading up to the attack Spencer repeatedly tried to get into his mother’s house, but was stopped by Mr Green as Spencer’s mother, Margaret Wheeler, had banned her son from her house for holding rowdy parties there and selling her possessions without her knowing.

Copy Pic from 2010 Examiner of James Spencer, Killer of Skelmanthorpe man, Peter Green.

The day before the murder Spencer went on a 16-hour drinking binge, downing more than 15 pints of Guinness, a cocktail and seven or eight vodkas.

At about 4am the following morning, Spencer went round to Mr Green’s home in Radcliffe Street, and started banging on the door and shouting.

Finding him not there, he went to his mother’s home, smashed down the door, went upstairs and, finding Mr Green in a bedroom, attacked and killed him.

He put his bloodied clothes and the weapons in a plastic Morrisons bag, and dumped it next to the house.

Police at the scene where Peter Green's body was found

He then drove to his stepfather’s home and told him: ‘You won’t believe what I’ve done.’

A post mortem found Mr Green had made a desperate attempt to stave off the vicious assault, suffering 30 cuts to his head and neck, skull fractures, multiple stab wounds and deep gashes on his wrists – inflicted after he died.

Spencer initially denied killing Mr Green, then said he had done it in self-defence.

He was given a sentence of imprisonment for the public’s protection – which is almost identical to a life sentence – and ordered to serve at least seven years and 148 days in jail on top of the 582 he had already spent inside.

He had already admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility after psychiatrists found he was suffering from an “abnormality of the mind.”

The court heard he suffered from Asperger syndrome, mood swings and panic attacks and was still racked with grief following the death of his father, Peter Spencer, in 2003.

A parole bid in 2013 failed with judges telling him the term was “not excessive” in light of the “substantial” aggravating features in the case.

This week Mrs green told the Examiner: “West Yorkshire Police have been excellent, it’s the legal system that’s been disgusting and I would like to know how the Parole Board has come to the decision to release him.”

Mrs Green says she has still not heard from the authorities regarding the date of Spencer’s release but says she has found out informally through sources.

She said: “He is going to be released on August 22 and will be tagged and live at a hostel in Leeds. He is not going to be allowed to come to the Huddersfield area including Skelmanthorpe or Wakefield but, bizarrely, can visit Denby Dale apparently.

Linda Green, widow of Skelmanthorpe man, Peter Green who was killed by alcoholic James Spencer. Linda and Peter Green on their wedding day.
Linda Green, widow of Skelmanthorpe man, Peter Green who was killed by alcoholic James Spencer. Linda and Peter Green on their wedding day.

“This killer will be free in the community to kill again. This has been proved in the past when prisoners have re-offended.

"I have not been officially informed about the August 22 release date. I’m absolutely nothing, totally forgotten about.

“Peter was my entire world, I still have his ashes and his spectacles and a handkerchief of his on my bedside table. We used to have a brilliant social life, dinner parties, we’d go away for weekends, life was wonderful. We worked hard and played hard.”

She said that on the night of the killing a male and female police officer called at her door. She said: “I asked if Peter was dead and he said ‘yes’. I went into shock and screamed.

“I said: ‘Are you Noel Edmonds, is it Gotcha or an April Fool?’ It was like I was in an American horror film, I was suicidal. It was like I was in a bad dream.

Her husband Peter's glasses case and a handkerchief sit on Linda's bedside table

“I don’t know how I have survived all this time but I seem to have gained an inner strength. I have mood swings and some days I feel I can take on the world and other days I have had enough.”

She says she can only bear to watch TV programmes like quiz shows and can’t view any kind of violence or murder dramas.

Her grief is so unbearable she says that she can’t bear to go out and see people enjoying themselves as it reminds her of a lost world she can never recover.

Poignantly the dinner table at her home is laid with a service which her husband saw but never used.

And the trauma of what she has experienced has directly impacted on her health according to her GP Nick Kaye who wrote to her victim liaison officer Zac Khan that she suffers “extreme emotional distress” when there are ongoing issues regarding parole proceedings.

Linda's husband's ashes

He said her “blood pressure reading is dangerous to her in terms of having heart attacks and strokes and I feel this can be put down entirely to her being under stress because of the possible release of Peter’s killer.”

A Prison and Probation Service spokeswoman said: “Public protection is a priority and a full risk assessment is carried out by the independent Parole Board when offenders are released into the community.

“Life-sentenced offenders are on licence for life and subject to supervision and a strict set of conditions, which can include exclusion zones which ban offenders from entering or living in certain areas. If they fail to comply with those conditions they can be recalled to prison.”

A Parole Board spokesman said: “We can confirm that a panel of the Parole Board directed the release of Mr James Spencer, following an adjourned oral hearing in March 2018 that was completed on paper in July 2018. Parole Board decisions are solely focused on whether a prisoner would represent a significant risk to the public after release. The panel will have carefully looked at a whole range of evidence, including details of the original evidence and any evidence of behaviour change.

“We do that with great care and public safety is our number one priority.”

Mark Burns-Williamson, the Police and Crime Commissioner for West Yorkshire has also been contacted for comment.