A HEARTBROKEN widow was told via text message that the killer who mutilated and bludgeoned her husband to death will be released "within days".

Linda Green, 65, was on holiday in Spain when she was informed James Spencer is set to be freed nine years after brutally slaughtering 67-year-old Peter Green.

Spencer battered the pensioner with a spanner then repeatedly stabbed him with a kitchen knife at his mother's home in Skelmanthorpe, West Yorkshire, in October 2008.

Mrs Green says her life was "totally destroyed" by the sickening attack on her husband of 28 years - but it was a further blow to learn his killer is getting out of jail in a text message from the probation service.

She told the Mirror: “I felt sick. I just couldn’t believe it. I just sat there thinking, ‘Is this real?’”

Mrs Green, who can't bring herself to say the murderer's name, continued: "I told [friends] 'that thing' who killed my husband is to be released.

"There is no justice, just ridiculous do-gooders who have no idea of the destroyed lives left behind existing in a constant nightmare."

On the night of his death, Mr Green was housesitting for the killer’s mum Margaret Wheeler, who lived round the corner, while she was on holiday.

Spencer had been on a 16-hour booze binge - downing more than 15 pints of Guinness, a cocktail and eight vodkas - when he went looking for Mr Green at his own home at around 4am.

But when he realised he wasn't there he went to his mother's where he took a spanner from his car and kicked down the door to the house and launched the deadly attack on the pensioner.

He put his bloodied clothes and the knife he used in a bin bag and thew it into his neighbour's garden before driving to his stepdad's home and saying: "You won’t believe what I’ve done."

Recalling the horrifying injuries her husband suffered, Mrs Green said: “That man totally mutilated my husband, he was stabbed and battered 32 times. He bludgeoned him over the head with a 32cm spanner then cut his fingers off.

“He knocked my husband’s eyes out, his brain out. It was so bad he had to be identified using his DNA."

Spencer was given a minimum of seven years and 148 days in jail - on top of the 582 days he had already spent in custody - when sentenced in May 2010.

He is due to be released later this month and will be on a tag while living in a hostel in Leeds, the newspaper reports.

The former nurse, who still lives in the marital home, is fearful that Spencer, who was declared a “serious risk to the public” by a judge, will attack again.

She told the Huddersfield Examiner: “He is not allowed to go to Skelmanthorpe but can go to Denby Dale, the next village just a few miles away.

"No one is safe. He is totally unpredictable, a drug user and alcoholic and very dangerous, has no emotions, just pure evil through and through his entire body.”

The Parole Board said in a statement: “We can confirm a panel directed the release of Mr James Spencer, following an adjourned oral hearing in March 2018 that was completed on paper in July 2018.

“Parole Board decisions are solely focused on whether a prisoner would represent a significant risk.”

A Prison and Probation Service spokesperson said: “Life-sentenced offenders are on licence for life, and subject to supervision and a strict set of conditions. If they fail to comply, they can be recalled to prison.”