Tyrannical British dad dismembered

A former public schoolboy murdered his overbearing father, dismembered his body and buried him under concrete in their garden because he wanted to escape the weight of expectation placed upon him, a jury heard yesterday.

Mark Alexander, 22, kept up the pretence that his father, Samuel, was alive for six months, even sending bogus Christmas cards to neighbours and claiming the cost of his father's home care from social services, it was alleged.

It was not until neighbours became concerned that they had not seen Samuel Alexander, 70, for months that they reported him missing.

Police found his partly burned, dismembered body buried in plastic bags under concrete at his home in Drayton Parslow, Buckinghamshire, in February.

Mark Alexander, who was in the third year of a law and French degree at Kings College, London, was considered a "dutiful and obedient son" by family and friends.

The court was told that he had struggled to live his own life, suffocated by the demands of his Egyptian-born father, who made him live with him at his home even while he was studying in London.

- INDEPENDENT