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BBC NEWS
Monday, 15 December, 2003, 19:09 GMT
A graduate with a fixation for serial killers and mass murder was planning “the perfect murder” when he bludgeoned and stabbed to death a mother and her teenage son.
Gregory Davis, 24, was detained indefinitely at a mental institution after Luton Crown Court heard how he armed himself with a carving knife and hammer and attacked three people.
Davis, of Milton Keynes, killed Dorothy Rogers, 48, and her 19-year-old son Michael at their home in Great Linford, Milton Keynes, on 28 January 2003.
On Monday he pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and to causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Michael Cowells, Mrs Rogers’s boyfriend.
The court heard Davis was in the grip of a “psychotic episode” when he killed. He was analysed by five psychiatrists who agreed he suffered depression, alcohol dependence and social anxiety.
Mr Justice Richard Aikens accepted the plea and said: “I’m satisfied you are suffering from mental illness and that it is appropriate that you be detained in a hospital for mental treatment.”
Patrick Browne QC, prosecuting, said Davis knew Mr Cowells and Mrs Rogers from a the Pilgrim’s Bottle pub, Great Linford, where they used to drink.
At the height of his depression he took a knife and hammer to Mrs Rogers’s home on the Stantonbury Estate.
Serial killer ‘ambitions’
After an argument in the house he attacked Mr Cowells with the hammer and then turned his attention to Mrs Rogers and her son.
Michael Rogers, who was killed after witnessing his mother’s death, had tried to escape from the house but was stabbed in a nearby children’s playground.
The court was told Davis’s original idea had been to kill Mr Cowells.
Mr Browne said the defendant had “ambitions” to be a serial killer and was fascinated with mass murder and killers.
He read extracts from Davis’s diary which detailed a formula for his future life.
It read: “Quit job tomorrow. Get Mick killed. Get Stuart to withdraw cash everyday. When all gone, kill him.
“Repeat Mick plan ad infinitum all over country and world in Las Vegas and swanky bars.”
In mitigation, Graham Parkins QC said: “The general public must appreciate this was the action of a sick man.”
Mr Cowells, 63, has since died after a fall at home.
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Fury at release of psycho killer who slaughtered mum and son eight years ago — (The Mirror)
Updated
By Damien Fletcher
A KILLER who butchered a mum and her son eight years ago will walk free this week after hiring a human rights lawyer.
The victims’ family thought Gregory Davis would be in Broadmoor for life and yesterday told of their “disgust” at the release ruling.Davis barged into the home of Dorothy Rogers, 48, and battered her with a hammer before stabbing her 31 times with a carving knife in January 2003.
He then chased her son Michael, 19, to a playground where horrified parents and kids saw him disembowelled.
He also battered Dorothy’s partner senseless with a claw hammer during the brutal rampage in Milton Keynes.
And her surviving son, who is too afraid to be named, said: “My family has got a life sentence and Davis can just walk free. We are disgusted. Where’s the justice for us?”
Davis, 32, plotted the random attacks in his diary, in which he also revealed his ambition to be a serial killer.
He pleaded guilty to manslaughter due to diminished responsibility and was sentenced to indefinite detention at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital as “an “extremely grave danger to the public”.
But within months of being locked up, he recruited a human rights lawyer on legal aid to battle for his release, successfully claiming his psychosis was caused by a reaction to medication he was taking for depression combined with alcohol.
He was transferred to a lower-security hospital in 2009 and granted two hours’ unescorted leave, four times per week.
Despite a campaign by Dorothy’s family to make sure he was excluded from Milton Keynes, he was allowed to enter the town to visit his terminally ill mother.
And a Mental Health Tribunal, conducted in private by a judge, has now ruled he should be conditionally discharged after just seven-and-a-half years.
Doctors, social workers and police were meeting today to arrange his move into “supported accommodation”, which involves regular meetings with health workers.
But the son added: “Who’s to say that if he takes another course of medication it couldn’t have an effect on him again?
“How can a psychopathic double killer suddenly be cured and safe enough to return to society after so few years?”
The Ministry of Justice said it could not discuss individual cases.
But a spokesman said: “Conditionally discharged patients may be recalled to a secure hospital if there is evidence of increased risk to the public.”