A 38-year-old North-east electrician yesterday admitted giving a six-year-old girl the sedative drug Temazepam and diverting the fumes from a gas boiler into the room in which she was sleeping.

Keith Dorrian, of Newtonhill, also admitted that, in a separate incident on Christmas day last year, he forcibly held his wife against a bar counter while compressing her throat and assaulted her by seizing her hair, hitting her head off a wall, slapping her, and dragging her along the street.

Aberdeen High Court heard that the assault on his wife happened during and after a Christmas eve party in a local public house.

He assaulted his wife Fiona when she refused to leave with him, was choking her and was restrained by a guest at the party.

However, she eventually left with him but when he assaulted her on the way home, she left their house to stay with friends. They are now divorced

The court heard that, on January 1, he attempted to commit suicide by disconnecting a gas pipe in a kitchen cupboard.

Two weeks later, he gave the girl, who was in the house at the time, half a Temazepam tablet in a glass of milk. He later phoned a friend and gave him two suicide notes when he arrived. He later gave a third note to his wife.

The letters said that he had given the child a half Temazepam, taken two himself, and killed them both.

Police found that the flue from the central heating boiler had been cut and that the fumes were diverted into the living room by a tinfoil pipe and through a hole in the wall. The air vent from the room had been blocked by a towel.

The court heard that the scheme would have been successful if the central heating system had operated for four hours or more but tests on the girl showed that the levels of carbon monoxide in her blood were normal and Advocate-depute Ronald Reid said it was unlikely the system had run for any significant period when the child was present.

Lord Abernethy deferred sentence to the High Court in Edinburgh on December 6 for a social inquiry report to be prepared by the Crown and for the defence to obtain an up-to-date psychiatric report to accompany the one drawn up at the time of the offences.