Arsonist nurse jailed after hate campaign

A NURSE launched a hate campaign against a witness who had secretly recorded her confess to an arson attack by scratching her car and making threatening gestures.

Patricia Pemberton, 57, started a fire at her son’s rented flat that caused £60,000 of damage, following a feud with his landlord. But when she realised she had been incriminated on tape, saying: “I’m not going down for some small flat – it will be something bigger”, she targeted Rachel Robinson, who had made the recording on her mobile phone.

Miss Robinson, whose aunt lived two doors from Pemberton in the village of Huncoat, near Accrington, Lancashire, later found abusive messages scratched into the paintwork of her Land Rover and was confronted by the mother of two, making gang-style gun gestures with her hand and saying:

“Bang!”

Pemberton, who had been an NHS nurse for 33 years, also posted Miss Robinson’s aunt a poison pen letter and shouted names such as “vindictive b----” and “grass” in the street.

At Preston Crown Court, Pemberton admitted witness intimidation and was given a 12-month sentence. It will run alongside a two-year sentence imposed last July after she admitted arson.