the times | Tuesday December 21 2021 2GM 13
News
A mentally ill man who beat a 93-year-
old widow to death with a crutch has
been locked up in hospital indefinitely.
Alexander Rawson, 63, attacked
Eileen Dean, a grandmother of five, at
Fieldside Care Home in Catford,
southeast London, in January.
Rawson later phoned 999 in a state of
distress and said: “I think somebody’s
been killed and I don’t know what’s
happening.” His victim, who had been
Care home neighbour beat woman, 93, to death with a crutch
self-isolating with Covid-19, suffered
multiple fractures to her face and trau-
matic brain injury. She died in hospital.
The court was told that Rawson had
moved into the bedroom next to Dean
in late December last year. He had
previously been detained under the
Mental Health Act and been an in-
patient at two south London hospitals.
London at the time was subject to
Tier 4 Covid restrictions and went into
a national lockdown in early January.
Rawson, who has a degenerativebrain condition commonly associated
with alcohol abuse, was found unfit to
stand trial for murder. After a trial of the
facts at the Old Bailey he was found by
a jury to have attacked and killed Dean.
Georgina Hampshaw, her daughter,
wept yesterday as she told the court
that she felt “let down” by social ser-
vices and the care home.
Reading a victim impact statement,
she described her mother as a kind,
cheerful and energetic woman who
“never lost her sense of humour”. Thecourt was told that Dean, a mother of
three, had loved music halls, where she
met her late husband, Charlie.
Hampshaw added: “My mum’s life
should never have ended this way.”
Judge Alexia Durran gave Rawson a
hospital order without limit of time.
The judge said that he presented a risk
to the public, citing his threats of
violence with a butter knife, scissors
and a walking stick.
Detective Chief Inspector Chris
Wood, who led the investigation, said:“Eileen was a completely defenceless
woman whose life was suddenly taken
away in a horrific manner.”
In the weeks after the killing the Care
Quality Commission inspected Field-
side and found its safety and leadership
needed improvement even though it
had previously been rated as good.
Michael Holland, medical director at
South London and Maudsley NHS
Foundation Trust, said that the trust
offered its “sincere condolences” to
Dean’s family and friends.Peter Chappell
Thomas Schreiber
blamed his mother
and her partner,
Sir Richard Sutton,
for the death of
his alcoholic fatherThe sisters of a vengeful son jailed for
life for murdering one of Britain’s
wealthiest men and trying to kill their
mother told him through tears how he
“took a knife to our world”.
Thomas Schreiber, 35, was impris-
oned for a minimum of 36 years for
leaving his mother, Anne, 66, for dead
and fatally stabbing Sir Richard Sutton,
83, her aristocratic partner, on April 7
this year, the eighth anniversary of the
death of his alcoholic father.
Louisa Schreiber and Rose
McCarthy, his elder sisters, stood in
court as he was sentenced yesterday
and told him he had killed “the most
innocent, kind man in the most brutal
of ways” and left their now paralysed
mother “trapped in a body she cannot
use”. “Richard never stood a chance,”
wounds to her face, neck and back and
was given 27 litres of blood during
emergency surgery after being flown by
air ambulance to a hospital in Bristol.
She can remember only the start of theSisters confront killer over baronet’s murder
Will Humphries
Southwest Correspondent
McCarthy told him through tears, her
hands shaking as she held her notes.
“You also killed our mother. You took
her life away and left her trapped in
constant pain and dependent on the
help of others. She can’t even wipe her
own tears.”
Schreiber blamed the couple for his
parents’ separation in 2002 and his
father’s death from alcoholism. After
months of telling friends he harboured
a murderous grudge, he attacked his
mother with a knife in their kitchen
before pursuing Sutton upstairs to his
bedroom and stabbing him repeatedly
in the heart.
Schreiber denied murdering Sutton
and attempting to murder his mother,
claiming he was suffering from a
mental disorder which meant he was
not in control. However, on Friday the
jury convicted him of both charges.
McCarthy, 36, described how theirmother “can’t hold her own grandchil-
dren” and her infant son will “never
know what it’s like to have her hug him”.
Louisa Schreiber, 39, told the court
that Sutton was a “father figure” whom
she “loved dearly”. She said he “should
have had an honourable and dignified
passing” but instead his death was “full
of fear and violence”.
“The image of him trying to escape
Tom haunts me and keeps me awake at
night,” she said. “I am full of disbelief
that my own flesh and blood could do
such a horrific thing. My little brother
who I adored has become a stranger to
me.” At this point, Schreiber blurted out
“I am sorry” from the dock, through his
own tears.
Ms Schreiber told her brother that
she had to encourage their tetraplegic
mother “not to give up” during her
darkest moments after coming out of a
coma. Anne Schreiber survived 15 stabattack, when her son called her a
“gold-digging bitch” before slashing her
face from her eye to her lips.
A three-week trial at Winchester
crown court was told that Schreiber,
who was unemployed, became con-
sumed by hatred and resentment to-
wards the couple, despite living rent-
free in the annexe of Moorhill, Sutton’s
country mansion near Gillingham,
Dorset, and being given a £100,
lump sum and a £1,000 monthly allow-
ance by the millionaire landowner.
Caroline Sutton, the baronet’s only
daughter, told the court her father’s life
was “ended so abruptly and in such an
unimaginably cruel manner by an indi-
vidual that he welcomed into his home
as a member of his family for years”.
Mr Justice Garnham, passing sen-
tence, told Schreiber that his actions
“have caused utter devastation in the
Sutton and Schreiber families”.Time’s up After an £80 million restoration project that silenced Big Ben for four years it will be ready to ring in the new yearTOLGA AKMEN/AFG/GETTY IMAGESDitch white
men of past,
says college
Academics at University College
London (UCL) are being encouraged to
“check their privilege” and reconsider
the number of courses that focus on
“dead white men” if they want to secure
a promotion.
The policy is part of a UCL initiative
that is aimed at “challenging traditional
Eurocentric, male-dominated curricu-
la and ensuring the work of margina-
lised scholars on race, sexuality, gender,
and disability are fairly represented in
curricula”.
The document, obtained by The
Daily Telegraph, suggests that research-
ers applying for lecturer roles should
“demonstrate the impact” of their
engagement with the institution’s
Liberating the Curriculum initiative.
The internal paper, titled UCL Aca-
demics Careers Framework, encourages
academics to “check their privilege”,
“be the change”, and “acknowledge the
prejudices baked into a field”.
In their present form, many academ-
ic disciplines are “deeply exclusive and
unfair” because they are overly repre-
sented by “dead white (able-bodied
European) men”, the document states.
Toby Young, general secretary of the
Free Speech Union, said the proposals
were an infringement of academics’
“right to free speech and almost
certainly unlawful”.
UCL said: “We have a long tradition
of safeguarding freedom of speech and
are strongly committed to upholding
academic freedom of inquiry in our
teaching and research.”
One academic said: “I think this
whole woke avalanche is really
concerning because it is like a religious
fervour.”A retired police firearms instructor
who “executed” his daughter’s fiancé
after being told that his home was to be
sold has been convicted of murder.
David Hucker, 69, shot Robert
Williamson, who had lost his job and
was spending £1,000 a week on cocaine.
In a recording of a 999 call played to
Maidstone crown court Williamson,
43, was heard screaming: “He just shot
me in the fing chest”. Hucker was
then heard shouting: “I fing warned
you” and then shot him in the head.
Hucker, who had been in the Metro-
politan, City of London and Kent
forces, shot Williamson in May with a
12-bore shotgun, one of six guns he
legally owned. Nicholas Corsellis QC,
for the prosecution, said the killing
amounted to “an execution” with a
16-second delay between the two shots.
Hucker became angry when Willi-
amson, who was engaged to Hucker’s
daughter, Samantha, said that they
planned to sell his terraced home in
Dartford, Kent. Samantha had bought
the house so her father could continue
living there after his divorce. Financial
difficulties meant that the couple also
had to sell their own home near by.
After his arrest Hucker told police: “I
used to be a firearms instructor for 40
years... and what did I do, shoot the
f***ing son-in-law.”
Hucker denied murder, claiming that
he had only wanted to frighten
Williamson by firing into the ceiling.
Judge Philip St John-Stevens said
that it was “a cowardly and callous act
of murder” and sentenced Hucker to
life with a minimum of 20 years.
Police gun
expert guilty
of ‘execution’
David Brown