Monday 15 August 2011

Sudden News Blackout?

Members of a Hampshire family have been found guilty of conspiring to kill an elderly relative for his money.

A mother, 49, her 16-year-old daughter, son, 19, and his 17-year-old girlfriend have today been convicted of plotting to murder the 89-year-old pensioner.
I’ve been following this one for a while.
A second daughter, aged 14, has been convicted of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
Truly, the family that (attempts) to slay together…
Jurors at Winchester Crown Court have heard throughout the seven-week trial how the pensioner was left battered and bruised after being hit repeatedly with "handed bricks" wrapped in plastic bags.
Truly depraved.
Sentencing has been adjourned until a later date and none of the defendants can be identified for legal reasons.
All we know is it’s a family.

More ‘Manson’ than ‘Partridge’.

7 comments:

Jack Savage said...

What is a handed brick?

patently said...

Jack - perhaps they're special bricks for left-handed bricklayers? Mustn't discriminate...

Rob said...

The article says 'PIKEYS' in letters so big you can't see them. The evasiveness is as plain as when you see 'Operation Trident' in a BBC news article.

Macheath said...

From the BBC:

'The elderly man, who suffered from dementia and lived with his wife, was attacked at his bungalow in a village near Winchester, Hampshire, in November 2010, by family members trying to get their inheritence early.'

More likely, trying to get their hands on the money before it was swallowed up in care home fees.

For anyone who has not yet encountered this situation, it goes roughly like this: when your elderly relative with dementia finally needs full-time care and is admitted to a home, the cost will be charged in full if the 'client's' assets are over £23,000.

Dementia care is not cheap; a place in a decent care home will set you back over £1,000 a week. The better the home, the more likely that your relative will live for long enough to exhaust his or her assets entirely - the proceeds from the sale of a modest bungalow could be gone in under three years.

To be honest, given the sums at stake, I'm surprised that there aren't far more cases like this; families attempting to hasten a relative's end by neglect or violence rather than watch money they hoped to inherit eroded away at a frightening rate.

Or perhaps there are, but they are kept quiet to avoid giving more people the idea.

KenS said...

Perhaps if there are other cases like this (and I suspect there are), the family use something more subtle than bricks....?

JuliaM said...

"What is a handed brick?"

I think it's meant to imply that they were handed to the children by the adults.

"The article says 'PIKEYS' in letters so big you can't see them."

I did wonder. Some of the other court reports (now vanished) seemed to point that way.

"To be honest, given the sums at stake, I'm surprised that there aren't far more cases like this..."

Maybe they are successful, and so never come to police attention? Horrible thought.

Anonymous said...

IIRC, the 'kids' of that family were adopted... changelings.