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Family killer gets life

1/11/2002

A DEBT-ridden student who butchered his mother, father and sister during a family row has been jailed for life.

Hemanshu Patel, aged 21, shook his head as the jury at Manchester crown court convicted him of the gruesome murders. But Mr Justice Sachs said Patel had 'rightly' been convicted and told him: "A graver crime is difficult to imagine."

The jury had taken just three and a half hours to accept the prosecutions allegations that Patel, a student at Tameside college stabbed his father Natverlalbhai 15 times, his mother Mudhuben seven times and strangled his sister Manisha. He then tried to convince police the attacks were carried out by a burglar, daubed racist remarks in lipstick on a wall and ransacked the house.

Later 21-year-old Patel claimed his father killed his mother and sister and he had to stab his father in self-defence.

During the trial prosecutor Mr Henry Globe QC said it would never be known precisely why Patel committed the murders at the family home in Tewkesbury Avenue, Ashton.

Mr Globe said Patel's father, a devout Hindu, was the dominant personality in the house. He argued with his wife and disapproved when his twin daughters had boyfriends from a different religion. One daughter did marry and moved to Northampton.

The defendant began getting into debt, owed his sister Manisha money, pocketed £50 given to him to pay the electric bill and owed on credit cards.

On the afternoon of the murders he and his father were at home when his mother came back from work. Neighbours heard an argument and shortly after Manisha arrived. After the murders, it's claimed, Patel went drinking with a friend, inviting him back to the house when it was dark and they discovered the three bodies.

Police who attended found the house had been ransacked, there was evidence of a small fire under a chair and the words 'Paki out' were daubed on a wall. But although Patel finally said he killed his father in self defence counsel said a search of the home revealed that Patel himself had written out a plan for the murders.

In his room they found a piece of paper on which he had written, 'Put two in their room. Wait until three comes. Do stuff. Wait until 12 o'clock. Don't answer phone'.

In his defence Patel said his father had killed his mother and sister and that he had then stabbed him to death in fear and for revenge. He said he had found his mother's body upstairs and his sister's on the floor in the front room with his father standing over her with a knife.

He said: "I grabbed a cricket bat and hit him over the head. He fell to the floor and dropped the knife so I grabbed it and stabbed him. I went into the kitchen, got another knife and stabbed him again a lot of times. I was angry because of what he had done to Manisha and my mum."

He said he set fire to the house later to hide what he and his father had done.