Greetings! Please Share & Subcribe.
A man who killed his girlfriend and their 10-month-old daughter in a "sustained and fearsome" knife attack will spend at least 26 years in prison.
Anthony Marsh, 22, admitted plunging the weapon into half-naked Stephanie Bellinger, 24, more than 30 times in the bedroom of their home in Totton, Hampshire, in February this year.
The unemployed bar manager attacked his girlfriend as she slept and also stabbed baby Lili Marsh once through the head as she lay on the same bed.
Marsh was found guilty by a jury of the two murders on Tuesday and sentenced to life.
Jailing him for life, Mr Justice Holroyde said Marsh would serve a minimum of 26 years before he is eligible for parole.
The judge called the murders "deliberate, dreadful and selfish" as Marsh rocked his head while sitting in the dock.
Marsh earlier admitted the killings but he denied murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
The jury heard that he suffered from bipolar disorder and the family were £13,000 in debt when he lost his job after he stole from a pub he worked in.
He claimed to have heard voices telling him to kill his girlfriend and daughter but he did not kill the couple's two-year-old son, who was left locked in the house for more than 24 hours following the killings and after Marsh fled.
Mr Justice Holroyde said the youngster had been left in a "scene of dreadful bloodshed" and he had been in the room with the bodies.
"He probably took the cordless telephone to his dead mother as it rang as family tried to contact her," the judge told the court.
He said Marsh had left "a most dreadful scene" for Miss Bellinger's mother Elizabeth Bellinger and her elder sister Ruth Goody, who found the bodies.
The prosecution earlier said the killing of receptionist Miss Bellinger had "powerful elements of sexual motivation and revenge".
SKYNEWS
0 Comments