Winehouse's Husband Wanted Doherty "Smashed To Pieces"

06/11/08 5:00pm

by Steve McLean (CHARTattack)

Blake Fielder-Civil seems as addicted to paying people to do bad things as he is to crack.

Amy Winehouse's husband of just more than a year pleaded guilty to inflicting grievous bodily harm and perverting the course of justice on June 6 in connection with a beating and bribe offer. Fielder-Civil, 26, and a friend attacked pub landlord James King in June 2006. To avoid assault charges, Fielder-Civil used two middle men to offer King 200,000 pounds ($400,000 Canadian) if he'd retract his statement to police about the beating and not turn up in court to give evidence about the beating. He was also asked to leave Britain so that law enforcement officials wouldn't find him.

Although Winehouse hasn't been implicated in the plot, it's believed that Fielder-Civil planned to use her money to pay off King.

While Fielder-Civil hasn't yet been sentenced, he's been behind bars since last fall while his wife has been spiralling out of control through drugs, drinking and bizarre behaviour — some of it in the company of equally disheveled Babyshambles frontman Pete Doherty. The jealous husband, fearing that Winehouse was doing more than playing with mice while with Doperty, allegedly offered another inmate at London's Pentonville Prison 20,000 pounds ($40,000) to lay a beating on the former Libertines member.

Former bouncer Richard Lyttle told Britain's The Sun newspaper that he didn't accept the money. Instead, he reported Civil-Fielder to the police when he was released from prison. No action was apparently taken against Civil-Fielder.

"We were sitting in my cell and he [Fielder-Civil] said, 'If you get Doherty for me I'll give you £20,000,'" Lyttle is quoted as saying to the tabloid. "He said, 'Amy's obviously sleeping with him.' He knew I used to be a doorman and knew some tough people. He said he wanted him smashed to pieces."