MENTALLY ILL WOMAN WHO STRANGLED AUNT TO BE DETAINED INDEFINITELY
A WOMAN who strangled her elderly aunt to death has been sent to a secure mental health unit indefinitely after a court ruled her to be insane.Diane Stephens was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity following a two-day trial at Liverpool Crown Court.
Jurors were told she killed her 81-year-old aunt at the victim’s bungalow off Green Leach Lane, Haresfinch in January.
Bizarrely, the mother-of-one left the body surrounded by clothes and uncooked bacon and beans “for her victim’s journey to heaven”, Liverpool Crown Court was told.
But 54-year-old Stephens, from Appleton, Warrington, was cleared of murder because she had been suffering from an extreme mental illness.
The court heard she had been responsible for the death of widow Jean, who Stephens thought of as a “mother figure”.
But both the defence and prosecution agreed she was legally and mentally insane at the time of Mrs Nevin’s death.
However, as a matter of law only a jury can reach such a verdict, meaning a trial had to take place.
Judge Gerald Clifton directed the jury to return the verdict and imposed an indefinite hospital order under the mental health act.
This means Stephens will be detained at a secure unit.
The court was told how her victim was found wearing a coat, scarf, gloves and was surrounded by bags of defrosting food, cleaning materials, clothes and a plate of uncooked bacon and beans on January 12.
She was discovered by a neighbour and it was initially thought she had died of natural causes.
However, an investigation was launched after Stephens was admitted to Hollins Park, Winwick, where mentally ill patients are treated.
Earlier she had told her father the ‘grim reaper’ was in her flat and failed to remember being breathalysed or in a car accident that day.
The court heard that medical experts believed Stephens was suffering from a severe psychotic illness, amounting to a disease of the mind, which had become very acute in the days leading to the killing.
