Son Bludgeons Parents To Death

A judge says lessons must be learned after a man bludgeoned his parents to death in spite of the family's repeated pleas for help from mental health workers.

Timothy Crook, 44, was detained indefinitely at Rampton Hospital after a jury found him responsible for killing his parents Robert, 83, and Elsie, 76, at the home they shared with him in Swindon.

Psychiatrists at Rampton diagnosed Crook with a delusional disorder and said he was a grave and immediate danger to the public after he strangled and beat his parents with a metal hammer in July, 2007.

Crook dumped the bodies underneath wheelie bins in the garden of a home he owned in Lincoln, along with a suitcase he had packed with their clothes.

Crook was ruled unfit to plead due to mental illness.

A jury at Bristol Crown Court were asked to decide whether he had committed the acts. Crook, who appeared via video link from hospital, remained motionless when the verdicts were read out.

Outside court, Crook's sister Janice Lawrence said that for five years the family had sought help for her brother and she had told mental health services in Swindon that her parents were in immediate danger.

Yet in the years before the killings, Crook was not cared for by a GP or mental health team in Lincoln or Swindon and his medication, which had been a strong sedative and anti-psychotic drug, was stopped three years before the tragedy.

Justice Roderick Evans said: "This family were trying to obtain help for a considerable time before this tragedy occurred but their efforts to obtain help were largely unsuccessful.

"It appears to me that the appropriate authorities should stand back, look at this case to see whether something did go wrong and what lessons can be learnt."

How pitiful this is.

Very tragic that no one helped this family.

That son was a time bomb waiting to explode...

Again we have the authorities turning a blind eye and now 2 people are dead

this is very sad! Poor parents!

Ambersuz wrote:That son was a time bomb waiting to explode...

Again we have the authorities turning a blind eye and now 2 people are dead

You got that right.