A YORK man received a bereavement card with a message written in blood after ending a relationship with another man, the city’s magistrates court was told.

Robert Dane also set his victim’s garden gate on fire one night.

Firefighters had to be called out to extinguish the blaze, and graffiti was earlier written on his door.

Dane, 33, of Rydall Terrace, Leeds, was appearing for sentencing after pleading guilty on an earlier occasion to charges of harassment and arson.

However, District Judge Adrian Lower committed him to be sentenced at York Crown Court next month The judge saying there were aggravating features about the arson, although Dane would be given credit for his guilty pleas.

Sam Law, prosecuting, said Dane had been in a relationship with the York man for nine months, before the latter ended it in April this year.

“Mr Dane didn’t take the ending of the relationship well,” she said.

She said the fire left the gate beyond repair and later that day, Dane emailed police, admitting he had caused the blaze.

His victim had found the bereavement card pushed under the door of his office, with a message written in blood, accompanied by a razor blade which Dane had used to cut himself.

There was also a metal nail file and an 11-page letter, in which Dane blamed the York man for most of the things which had gone wrong in his life since the relationship had ended.

His victim had said that Dane’s behaviour had left him exhausted and stressed and suffering nightmares.

Harry Bayman, mitigating, said the offences arose out of Dane’s inability to accept that the relationship was over.

He said Dane remained in a very depressed state of mind and his job within the criminal justice system and his ambitions of joining the probation service were at an end.

He stressed that the gate which was set on fire was not near the house.

Dane was given renewed bail, on condition that he maintain a curfew, make no contact with the York man and does not enter North Yorkshire except to attend court.