Student killed parents to keep up fantasy

A brilliant student with a rare psychological condition yesterday admitted stabbing and beating his parents to death after they thwarted his attempts to pass himself off as a high-rolling sportsman.

Brian Blackwell's mental condition - narcissistic personality disorder - made him obsessed with fantasies of his own success and wealth.

The lies and exaggeration which are a part of the condition left his girlfriend convinced that Blackwell, 19, would pay her £80,000 a year as his manager, buy £60,000 Mercedes cars and designer jewellery and take her to one of New York's most exclusive hotels.

But when Blackwell's parents - retired accountant Brian Blackwell, 71, and his wife Jacqueline, 60 - prevented him securing the money he needed to keep up his story, he beat them with a claw hammer and stabbed them up to 30 times with a kitchen knife at their £350,000 bungalow in the affluent village of Melling, on Merseyside.

The day after killing them, he used their credit cards to fund a £30,000 spending spree to America with his girlfriend - a trip which included £4,800 business class seats to New York and a three-night, £2,200 stay at the Presidential Suite of the Plaza Hotel.

Blackwell - an "exemplary student" with four A grades at A-level - was jailed for life by Mr Justice Royce at Liverpool Crown Court, who was told that his disorder was currently untreatable and may remain so throughout Blackwell's adult life.

The 12-year tariff means he will be eligible for parole in five years and seven months but the judge indicated he may never be released.

"For a son to do this is almost beyond belief but you are no ordinary son," he said.

Blackwell pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Despite academic brilliance that earned him offers from the Edinburgh and Nottingham University medical schools, Blackwell's inclination to exaggerate his achievements began as soon as he reached the £7,000-a-year Liverpool College on a scholarship. He lied about his exam results and about his tennis ability.

He convinced his girlfriend and fellow student, Amal Saba, that he was an international tennis player, sponsored by sportswear firms Nike and Fisher. His Nike contract, he told Ms Saba, entitled him to a personal secretary - a role she could fulfil, earning 10per cent of all his winnings, an annual £20,000 bonus and expense account not exceeding £69,000 - as well as her basic salary.

In fact, Lawn Tennis Association rankings showed him to be a decent player at his local David Lloyd tennis centre. The Fisher contract entitled him to 50pc off the retail price of equipment. There was no contract with Nike.

Blackwell gave Ms Saba a cheque for £39,000 in April 2004, in respect of three months' salary as his manager. Since he was 9p overdrawn at the bank at the time, it bounced. Blackwell's balance in a HSBC account was £179 at best and he had just a few pence in a savings account.

Instead, he withdrew £9,000 from a Fixed Rate account - opened for him by his parents to support him through university - and used it to buy a new £6,600 Ford Ka for Ms Saba.

But his mother found out and was infuriated, ordering him to telephone his girlfriend and ask for the car back. Ms Saba was upset and, after her mother intervened, offered to pay him back. On Blackwell's insistence she kept the car but the incident left its mark.

"His parents were getting in the way of his grandiose vision for himself and Amal," said Robert Steer QC, prosecuting.

Undeterred, Blackwell tried to secure a Visa card, telling Barclays Bank he was a professional tennis player earning £45,000 a year and needed credit because he was due to play in the French Open championships.

Again, his mother got wind of the plan, visited the bank's branch manager and put a stop to it.

Blackwell's lies - including claims he had bought a £450,000 flat in a complex shared by the Liverpool footballer Steven Gerrard - continued unabated. But in May he asked Ms Saba to accompany him to a Miami tennis tournament, enabling them to holiday in New York. It was lie that proved "a little more difficult to perpetuate," said Mr Steer.

Both Ms Saba and her mother, a doctor, were sceptical but their internet checks confirmed a booking for the Plaza Hotel. With time running out and no apparent funds, Blackwell used his father's credit card at 11.20am on Sunday July 25, to buy two one-way business class tickets for the following morning's 5.42am Manchester-New York flight.

He visited the tennis club with his father that morning - but within hours he approached him as he sat in his armchair and stabbed him so violently about the head and body that police initially thought he had been shot. Blackwell then killed his mother in a similar fashion.

Holiday photographs suggest the US trip, which began hours after the killings, passed off happily. It included stops in Florida, Barbados, San Francisco and New York.

After returning to Britain on August 12, Blackwell convinced neighbours that his parents had unexpectedly left for their villa in Majorca. He spent the summer at Ms Saba's house and even feigned distress that they had not returned for his A-level results.

A desperate attempt to get local youths to burn down his parents' bungalow failed and eventually, the smell of the Blackwells' decomposing bodies alerted neighbours.

They called in the police and Brian Blackwell was arrested. He maintained his innocence for a day and a half before confessing. "Is prison cold?" he asked detectives.

Blackwell wept in the dock yesterday as a letter from him as read out to court.

"Every moment of every day I wish I could turn back the hands of time," it read. "I eternally long to be a little boy again at a time when everyone really loved each other, when we could have a happy time and be a family once more. "

- INDEPENDENT