A JILTED lover kidnapped his former fiancee and took her on a seven-hour terror drive after stalking her for a year, a court was told yesterday.

Children's nurse Joanne Castle, 25, feared that she was going to die with Colin Mulcahy, 39, who had left a suicide note for his parents.

He sent a text message to her mobile telephone which said: "It's time for revenge and it's going to be agony for you, slut".

He leapt from a bush as she stepped off a bus in Thornaby, Teesside, battered her unconscious with a rock and dragged her into his red Ford Sierra.

For the next seven hours he silenced her moans by forcing her to drink orange juice laced with crushed temazepam tablets.

Finally he dumped the car at North Tees General Hospital, Stockton, with his terrified former girlfriend in the back hidden under a blanket.

Police found a note on the car's dashboard to Mulcahy's parents which said: "I am sorry about the bad news you are going to hear. But I have to do what I've done to save face and my own personal dignity. I love Jo so much I could not leave her behind and take my life for someone else to have her".

Prosecutor Ian West said Mulcahy's original plan was to make her watch as he gassed himself in the car at a campsite in Whitby, North Yorkshire.

Mulcahy, unemployed, of Chesterton Court, Norton-on-Tees, was jailed for four years yesterday at Teesside Crown Court. He was also made subject to an indefinite restraining order under the Protection from Harassment Act.

He admitted kidnapping and assault on July 24, and to putting Ms Castle in fear of violence between August last year and last July. He will remain on licence for five years.

Judge David Bryant told him: "Clearly this young lady was subjected to a reign of terror, culminating in an horrific experience which will no doubt remain with her for the rest of her life."

Amanda Perry, for Mulcahy, who sobbed throughout the hearing, said he was in the depths of despair after Miss Castle walked out with their four-year-old daughter, Lauren, in August last year.

She said he had now accepted the relationship was over because of his violent behaviour.

The court heard Mulcahy made three suicide attempts while on remand in prison