A MAN who tried to kill a woman he met on the internet in a suicide pact will face sentence at the High Court in Edinburgh on November 17.

John Bell (45), Normans Road, Richmond, Yorkshire, admitted that on July 5 he attempted to murder Susan Lyons by cutting her wrist with a knife at the Beinn a Ghinne Forest, by Portree, Skye.

The High Court previously heard that the couple met earlier this year through a website and moved in with each other after four weeks. It became obvious to Miss Lyons that Bell had a drink problem and he became abusive towards her. The couple ended up in Skye.

Miss Lyons was frightened for her safety and wrote a note for her mother and sister, which she hid in a pocket of her holdall.

It read, “John has got me into this mess. I am sorry I can find no other way out of it. I am dead. I love you all. P.S. He made me do so many things.”

Both had posted suicide notes to their families and Bell had bought two filleting knives, which he felt would be suitable for the suicide pact.

The court had heard that they drove to Beinn a Ghinne Forest where they planned to take drink and pills and then attach a hosepipe to the car exhaust.

Unexpectedly Bell cut Miss Lyons’ wrist, severing the artery. He asked Miss Lyons to do the same to him, but she could not.

He then drove her to Portree Hospital where he told her, “Don’t die on me.” She was then taken by air ambulance to Raigmore Hospital, Inverness where she underwent surgery to repair four severed tendons and a severed artery.

At the High Court in Perth yesterday Bell’s solicitor Gordon Fleetwood told the court that due to “a serious of misadventures” background reports were not yet ready. Judge Lady Dorrian deferred sentence and forfeited the knife.