Amy Winehouse’s ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil was jailed for two years and eight months yesterday for burgling a house to feed his heroin habit.
Police spotted the ‘Rehab’ singer’s ex with accomplice, Christopher Sylvester, wearing balaclavas and carrying an "impressive-looking" replica handgun.
The outlaws had ransacked a house in Rawdon, Leeds, stealing goods including an X-Box, DVD players and jewellery worth £4000.
The pair would have got away with it had police not spotted their car's stolen number plates. The court heard that the fake gun was found with a hammer and a balaclava made from tracksuit bottoms when the car was stopped in February.
Fielder-Civil, who divorced pop star Winehouse two years ago, was found to be high on a cocktail of cocaine and opiates when he was arrested.
He admitted the theft and carrying an imitation firearm, allegedly because he was scared of reprisals from drug-trafficking gangs.
The 29-year-old, of Sleaford, Lincolnshire, smiled briefly at the public gallery and, when he was handed his sentence, thanked Judge Scott Wolstenholme, who said it would bring "no comfort to the people preyed on by drug addicts".
Leeds Crown Court heard he had now kicked heroin for the sake of new love Sarah Aspin, 31, and their baby.
Sylvester, 29, of Leeds, also got 32 months.
Judge Scott Wolstenholme said the case illustrated the depths people sink to when in the grip of heroin addiction.
Fielder-Civil, went into the music trade as a video production assistant after leaving Bourne grammar school to try his luck in London.
He married Winehouse in Miami in 2007 but the couple were divorced two years later after a troubled and sometimes violent relationship. An attempted reconciliation after the divorce failed.
He was jailed for 27 months in 2008 for drug offences, but his lawyer Richard Reed said in mitigation that he was full of regret and remorse and was now drug-free.
Both men will serve half their sentences before being considered for parole. Fielder-Civil also faces court proceedings over confiscation under proceeds-from-crime legislation.
