HUDDERSFIELD RELIGIOUS ZEALOT JERMAINE GILCHRIST JAILED FOR 20 YEARS FOR MURDER OF HIS CULT LEADER MOTHER
A religious zealot from Huddersfield, who murdered his cult leader mother when she objected to a preacher he was watching on TV has been jailed for more than 20 years today.Jermaine Gilchrist, 39, stabbed 58-year-old Beryl Gilchrist in the neck before covering her in a duvet and laying a bible next to her.
Their relationship disintegrated after she gave herself a name used to refer to Jesus and cut off her family to become the leader of a Christian religious sect.
The case was heard at the Old Bailey - three years after Gilchrist was deemed mentally ill and was sent to a mental hospital.
Gilchrist later told detectives: ‘She only do evil’ and claimed he had killed her ‘to send her on her way.’ Oliver Blunt QC, defending, said both Gilchrist and his brother Elvis had fallen out with their mother after she joined a church group called Elelyon The House of Prayer For All Nations.
‘Elvis identified the breakdown of the relationship with their mother as being because of her association with what he described as a mixed-up African cult’, he said.
‘The catalyst that seemed to provoke this assault was an argument in relation to a certain preacher on a Sky TV channel that she took exception to.
Mr Gilchrist was watching a preacher, she didn’t like that preacher, and that argument ended up in the fatal attack on Mrs Gilchrist.’ The court heard Gilchrist changed his name by deed poll to Nazarine Samuel and had cut off contact with his family.
When he told police about the attack, on June 24, 2010, he said: ‘She began speaking to me very rudely, talking to me like I was some beast between her legs.
I judged her.’ He also mentioned he ‘got a pillow so she could rest her head, and put a fake Bible next to her,’ which was described as another manifestation of his troubled state.
Gilchrist has been detained under the Mental Health Act since January 2011, having been deemed mentally unfit to plead.
However, after being passed fit by psychiatrists, he pleaded guilty to murder and a separate attack on his ex-girlfriend.
He was sentenced for life with a minimum of 20 years and 252 days for murder, plus an additional 8-year sentence for the assault on Ms Helm, his ex-girlfriend, who he also injured with a vegetable knife after breaking into her home.
Gilchrist, of North Street, Lockwood, also has previous convictions for threatening behaviour in 1999, theft, and disorderly conduct in 2009.
Judge Nicholas Cooke QC expressed the gravity of killing one’s own mother: ‘This is an offence of murder of your own mother, and that’s a dreadful thing, to kill one’s own mother,’ and noted his mental state at the time.
Gilchrist explained his actions: ‘He said if the injury had been fatal he would have just let her die like his mother,’ and that he ‘killed her to send her on her way,’ indicating his religious mania influence.
The attack on his mother occurred after an online argument about a preacher she objected to, and he bought a knife beforehand.
The judge highlighted her last moments as terror-filled, with her attempting to escape before being caught and stabbed.
