British Justice Strikes Again!, Scandal of mentally ill man who killed his father, was then released...and killed his mother - 10th Apr 2011

Last month at Liverpool Crown Court, Leslie Gadsby, 39, was sentenced to life for manslaughter. On the evening of March 31 last year police and firefighters had been called to the Liverpool home of his mother, 70-year-old Edna Gadsby, after neighbours reported seeing smoke.

They found her sofa and bed had been set on fire. In her son’s flat a few miles away they discovered Edna’s body in the bathroom, in a large pool of blood. Gadsby, a paranoid schizophrenic, had knifed her in the neck from behind with such force that it severed an artery and her jugular vein. It would have killed her immediately.

It was an appalling crime, made even more shocking by the fact that Gadsby was at liberty at all. In February 2004, he had killed his father with a claw hammer, and battered his mother with a spanner, fracturing her skull and wounding her arms and wrists.

This case once more highlights serious fundamental problems with mental health services in this country. It suggests that lessons have not been learned from previous, similarly tragic cases. If they had, Edna Gadsby might be alive today. Read More