A ONE-TIME gangster smashed up his home while suffering a mental breakdown because of his life in violent crime, a court heard.

Paul Lyons - jailed in 1998 for conspiracy to murder, and part of a prison riot months later - hurt his wife in the June mayhem.

As he wrecked their Middlesbrough home, Lyons hit the woman in the head with a hammer, causing a wound close to her front hairline.

The couple - who wed when the underworld figure was behind bars - left Teesside Crown Court together after he got a suspended sentence.

The 46-year-old admitted assault occasioning actual bodily harm, even though his wife and her daughters refused to give evidence.

He was given an 18-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, with supervision, after a judge heard he is now getting treatment.

Rod Hunt, mitigating, said: "It is obvious that this is an illustration of how hard it is to leave behind a life of crime.

"When one has been immersed in criminal behaviour as he has, leaving prison as a graduate of crime has been extremely difficult.

"The incredible efforts of his wife to keep him on the straight and narrow have worked. Since leaving prison, he has not reoffended apart from this, which is part of the breakdown.

"For someone who has seen the law as a challenge, something to be played with, it is a remarkable achievement.

"He has clearly been institutionalised, to an extent more than he or she knew, but now they know, and more importantly the Probation Service know.

"He is, hopefully, over the worst of his breakdown and the Probation Service can now work with him."

The judge, Recorder Jamie Hill, QC, told Lyons: "At the age of 46, you have obviously got a considerable reputation following you around, and due to your activities in the criminal underworld in the 1990s, you ended up in prison for a long time.

"It is plain that former life has left its scars, and from time to time you have had difficulty dealing with that."

Lyons, of Penistone Road, Middlesbrough, was involved in a gang which brought terror to the streets of Tyneside in the 1990s.

Paul Ashton - the kingpin whose empire was compared to that of the Kray twins - was jailed for 22 years for plotting to kill former associate Terence Mitchell, and drugs offences.

Mitchell was shot at on one occasion in a drive-by attack, and was seriously wounded when he was stabbed with a bayonet - naming Lyons as the knifeman.