9 JULY 2002
George Harrison’s widow Olivia is to sell Friar Park, the 120-room mansion in Oxfordshire where, in December 1999, she fought off a knife-wielding intruder who tried to kill her husband.

Olivia made her decision to leave the £20 million property after it was revealed that the attacker, Michael Abrams, is shortly to be released back into the community following treatment for schizophrenia.

A family friend said: “Abram’s release just reinforces her decision to sell. Olivia and (her son) Dhani didn’t want to hold on to a property that, among some very good memories, also held some pretty dreadful ones.”

Abrams stabbed ex-Beatle George 10 times in the night-time attack, claiming later that he was on a "mission from God" to kill him. "I felt my chest deflate and the flow of blood to my mouth," George recalled afterwards. "I truly thought I was dying."

And he would have died that violent death had it not been for Olivia, who attacked Abrams with a poker and a brass lamp, keeping him away from her bleeding husband until the police arrived.

"If I could turn back the clock, I would give anything not to have done what I did in attacking George Harrison," Abrams said at the weekend. "But looking back on it, I have come to understand that I was at the time not in control of my actions. I can only hope the Harrison family might somehow find it in their hearts to accept my apologies."

Olivia and Dhani issued a statement which said, "We certainly wish Mr Abram no ill, but to be presented with this as a fact after the event is deeply upsetting and insulting, and we feel completely let down by the system. It remains the case in this country that the victim simply has no voice. The law must be changed."

George succumbed to cancer last December.