the times | Saturday December 18 2021 11NewsNews
attack on mother and her partner
the estate, said her father “was
constantly talking about Tom and
how he was disrespectful and
wanted him out of the house and
that he wouldn’t go”.
Stephen Woodward, her partner,
said: “Richard had become a
prisoner in his own house. Tom
treated the Range Rover, Richard’s
pride and joy, as his own, which
Richard didn’t like. It was a total
lack of respect for Richard and his
possessions... He is sarcastic and
thinks he is above everyone else.”S
chreiber’s behaviour became
increasingly abusive and
confrontational toward his
family, bringing up his long
held family grudges
seemingly at random. He hit and
choked Rose in 2017 after she called
him a “selfish c***” during a Boxing
Day argument. Schreiber attacked
his mother in 2019 by pulling her
hair as she drove them away from a
party after she called him a “f***ing
leech” during an argument.
He was persuaded to attend a
trauma counselling session in March
2019 to deal with his anger, but the
therapist running the four-day
residential course remembersSchreiber being “upset” about being
given his mother’s Mini to drive to
the hotel instead of Sutton’s Range
Rover or Aston Martin DB7.
Francis Lickerish, the family
therapist running the course, said
Schreiber “felt less than other
members of the family” and was
abusing alcohol. “I think he suffered
from alcoholism but I don’t think he
would accept that,” Lickerish said.
The most significant family fight
before the killing happened in
November 2020, when Schreiber
raged against his sister Louisa being
offered the inheritance of a
chandelier by their mother.
Schreiber claimed she “got
everything” and punched his sister
in the face. Sutton broke his walking
stick across the back of Schreiber in
an attempt to stop the fight.
Schreiber described fighting with
his mother and sisters as “normal”
but he took the blow from Sutton as
a personal affront. When Sutton
failed to apologise it festered in
Schreiber’s mind. He repeatedly
brought it up with family and
friends for months afterwards.
On Easter Sunday, April 4, he
typed into Google: “Consumed by
revenge what to do.”
On April 6, the night before the
killing, Schreiber texted Rose:
“Raising a glass to Dad who passed
away 8 years ago today. RIP. You
remember right? Your real father
David, not the one who “bought
you” who you call your father.. .”
At 11.28pm the same night he
typed into the Google search engine:
“Acting revenge on family betrayal.”
The next day he visited his father’s
grave, before returning home and
acting out his revenge fantasy.
After believing he had stabbed his
mother and Sutton to death, he sent
a voice message to Reid saying: “I’ve
let things get too much, I’ve killed
my mum and I’ve killed Richard and
I’m here lying in blood... I’m sorry
for letting my emotions get the
better of me, I don’t appreciate
being knocked around by Richard,
getting beaten up with my back
turned, my gold-digging mother.. .”
At 7.08pm, minutes after the
attack, he left a message for his
sister, saying: “Rose, I love you. I’m
sorry for what I’ve done. You’re a
fantastic sister even though you’re a
liar and a gold digger just like your
mother. You will always be part of
me. I’m so sorry for all my mistakes.
But the lies and the consistent lies
have become too much... I’m sorry
because I couldn’t take the lies
anymore and I couldn’t take the
hatred any more... Bye.”
The day after the killing,
Schreiber told a doctor: “I was
drunk and just snapped and
attacked my mum with a knife.. .”
A toxicology report estimated he
would have been three times the
drink-drive limit when he carried
out the attack. He claimed in court
it began when his mother told him
“you’re drunk just like your father”.
Anne Schreiber, paralysed in a
wheelchair months later,
remembered him calling her a “gold
digging bitch” before stabbing her.
She told police officers: “It
wouldn’t surprise me if I did say ‘you
are drunk and behaving like your
father’. That would be a fair
assessment of his behaviour.”
Looking back, she told police:
“You might think ‘How can this
woman let something get so out of
hand?’, but I didn’t necessarily see it
coming. Many people will say you
know you had a volatile son, but I
still think this is quite extreme.”g
t
RRichard Sutton gave Thomas Schreiber
a £1,000-per-month allowance and a
rent-free place to stay at his Dorset
mansion, where he lived with Anne
Schreiber, Thomas’s mother. Rage
over the fate of his father, David, who
drank himself to death, led to his
attack on Sutton and his mother. He
was arrested, below, after a police
chase ended with him crashing his carPA; JAMES DADZITIS/SWNSJanuary 2019, on the understanding
it would only be for three to six
months.
During the next two years
Schreiber never looked to get a job
and instead created an art studio,
where he attempted to live out his
fantasy of becoming a painter.
Friends said they felt “there was a
change in temperament” in
Schreiber on his return.
James Reid, 63, who met
Schreiber at a wedding in 2009 and
became one of his few friends, said:
“He seemed aggressive... he became
less tolerant of what others were
doing, including myself.”
McCarthy said her brother was
“always putting Mum down and was
very controlling of her behaviour”.
“I was aware there were times
when Mum and Richard asked him
to leave,” she said. “But Mum didn’t
know what he would do [if they
kicked him out] and as she said to
me, ‘How do you kick out your own
child?’ ”
Sutton’s adult children with his
estranged wife, Lady Fiamma, said
Schreiber was someone who felt
“the world owed him a living”.
Caroline Sutton, who lived a mile
from Moorhill and helped managefailure. Thomas Schreiber never got
over his father’s death and felt his
family could have used Sutton’s
wealth to save him from his
alcoholism. He held on tight to his
father’s insults against the couple
and combined them with his own
insecurities and family jealousies
until they became a lethal cocktail
in his mind.
Schreiber also became convinced
he was getting less money from
Sutton than his older sisters, Rose
and Louisa, and became fixated with
the cars they were bought when
they had children of their own.
By September 2019 Schreiber was
telling friends he was contemplating
“revenge” on his mother and Sutton
“in order to stick up for the past,
present and future, for myself and
my father and to stand up against
traitors, hypocrites and liars”.
From late 2020 his revenge
fantasies turned to “murder”.
“I strategise every day about how
best to murder my mother and Co.
That is how bad my mind is at,” he
told a friend on March 23, 2021, just
weeks before the knife attack.
After his mother and sisters
moved into Moorhill in the summer
of 2003, Schreiber lived an itinerantlifestyle away from the mansion for
as long as possible. He tried to live
with his father in the bungalow but
that lasted only a few months before
he went to live with his maternal
grandmother in Denmark, aged 16.
He failed to complete an
International Baccalaureate at
college in Copenhagen and from the
age of 18 until he finally returned to
Moorhill in January 2019, aged 33,
he had started about 35 jobs, mostly
in sales, with some lasting just a day.
“I am sick and tired of being told
what to do by a bunch of arseholes,
arse-licking, corporate, bureaucratic... I have done many, many different
jobs and frankly I am sick of it,” he
told a friend this year.
During his 15 years away from
Moorhill he lived in Bournemouth,
Edinburgh and London, before
meeting a woman from Perth in
2016 and moving to Australia with
her. It was in Australia that he saw
his first counsellor, who suggested
he confront his mother about his
resentment. That ended with a
shouting match in which his mother
said she didn’t want him at the
family Christmas in 2018.
After Schreiber and his girlfriend
split up he returned to Moorhill in