‘I was sleepwalking’: Can you kill someone while you’re asleep?
“I was sleepwalking,” a public schoolboy, wearing only his boxing shorts, was heard to say after brutally attacking two fellow students and a housemaster.
Henry Roffe-Silvester, a teacher at the exclusive boarding school, was awoken in the middle of the night by footsteps coming from the dormitory directly above.
He went to investigate, and as he opened the door to the pitch-dark room, he saw a silhouetted figure who turned and struck him on the head with a hammer.
“I stumbled backwards into the corridor,” said Mr Roffe-Silvester, during his attacker’s two-month trial. “There was a second blow – I can’t remember if it was before I stumbled back – that’s a little bit hazy for me.”
He suffered six blows to the head before managing to get the weapon off the boy he now recognised as one of his students, who “slumped down” in a squat position and was heard to say: “I was dreaming.”
When paramedics arrived at Blundell’s School in Tiverton, Devon, they found “carnage” like “a scene from a horror film” with blood over the desks, the walls and the cabin-style beds.
There was no question the boy, then 16, caused the “awful injuries” to the housemaster and two sleeping dorm-mates – both boys suffered skull fractures, as well as injuries to their ribs, spleen, a punctured lung and internal bleeding.
Scene was ‘like horror film’
‘Zombie apocalypse’
He told a jury at Exeter Crown Court he kept hammers by his bed for “protection” from “the zombie apocalypse” or the end of the world.
He remembered going to sleep on 8 June last year, he said, and the next thing he recalled was being in the room which was “covered in blood”.
“I knew something really bad had gone on and everyone was looking towards me,” he said.
“I didn’t remember doing anything so the only rational thing I was thinking was that I was sleepwalking.”
Prosecutors said he had armed himself with three claw hammers, then waited for his victims to fall asleep before attacking them.
But his barrister, Kerim Fuad KC, said he must have been “sleepwalking to have committed these extraordinary acts” – meaning he would be not guilty of attempted murder by reason of insanity.
The history of the sleepwalking defence
The idea that acts of violence can be committed by people who are sleepwalking isn’t new – since the 14th century, the Catholic Church recognised the idea that a sleeper shouldn’t be held responsible for killing or injuring someone.
The first English case is believed to be the Old Bailey trial of Colonel Culpeper in 1686, who was said to have shot a guardsman and his horse during a dream. He was convicted of manslaughter while insane but pardoned a few weeks later.
More incidents came to light in the Victorian era as scientists began studying the mind, among them the famous case of Simon Fraser, a known sleepwalker, from Glasgow.
Believing he was saving his family from a wild beast that had burst through the floorboards, he killed his 18-month-old son by throwing him against a wall. He was cleared but was told by the judge to sleep alone in a locked room for the rest of his life.
Jules Lowe was cleared of murdering his father. Pic: PA
More recently, in 2005 Jules Lowe was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity and made the subject of a hospital order after claiming he was sleepwalking when he beat his father to death at the family home in Walkden, Greater Manchester, after a drinking session.
Three years later, father-of-two Brian Thomas strangled his wife Christine while they were on holiday in west Wales, believing an intruder had broken into their campervan.
The nightmare was suggested to have been triggered by an earlier incident when they were disturbed by youths doing wheel spins in the car park.
Thomas was described as a “decent man and a devoted husband” by the judge after being cleared of murder when prosecutors dropped the case.
The sleepwalking defence is rare – according to sleep expert Dr Neil Stanley, who was not involved in the Blundell’s case, and tells Sky News it has been successfully used just 200 times in the English-speaking world.
Sexsomnia
But it has become increasingly common over last 30 years, says Dr John Rumbold, a lecturer at the Nottingham Law School, who tells Sky News there is a growing number of sleep experts and a greater awareness among lawyers.
In the past, reported cases more commonly involved violence, he says, but now around 80% to 90% of cases involve sexsomnia, an extreme variant of sleepwalking, that can cause people to engage in sexual activity while unconscious.
“Very often it’s drunk young men” who are accused of rape or other sex offences, he says. “They don’t really have any other defence and it’s fairly complex actions.”
Dr Stanley believes that some people who are guilty have successfully used the defence in the past and says there is a lack of knowledge of the subject among judges, lawyers and juries.
He says that in theory he could use his expertise to tell someone how to behave and what to say to convince a court they were a genuine sleepwalker.
‘Get out of jail free card’
Some see it as “a get out of jail free card”, he says, but he adds that “people, in their sleep, can kill, they can rape, they can assault – sexually or physically”.
Barrister Ramya Nagesh, who has written a book on sleepwalking and other automatism defences tells Sky News that just because it is being used more “that doesn’t mean that it’s being used in bad faith because you do have to have expert opinion”.
She thinks there should be a change in the law to allow a verdict of not guilty by virtue of a medical condition to encompass cases involving sleepwalking, epileptic fits and hypoglycaemia.
“Automatism is an outright acquittal – it feels a bit odd to say we’ll excuse them, but they might go off and do it again,” she says.
“They don’t deserve to go to prison and wouldn’t benefit from a hospital order, so it would give judges a bit more power.”
Blundell’s school, Tiverton, Devon
The public schoolboy, now 17, who can’t be identified because of his age, has been found guilty of three counts of attempted murder after a jury deliberated for 40 hours and he will be sentenced in October.
His relatives told the jury there was a history of sleepwalking in the family and he said his mother had found him at the bottom of a staircase in their home around a decade ago.
A ‘textbook example’?
After the attacks, the teenager told a student he was watching horror movies, while others heard him say: “I am sorry, I was dreaming.”
At his trial, sleep forensic expert, Dr Mark Pressman, who has decades of experience in the field, has seen 20,000 patients and more than 100 cases of sleepwalking violence, was called as a witness.
He described the case in court as a “textbook example”, explaining sleepwalkers could be fearful for their lives and “respond with violence to protect themselves at a very primitive level”.
“The defendant swivelled around and attacked his housemaster without knowing who he was,” he said. He was not aware he had attacked the housemaster.”
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But another expert witness, Dr John O’Reilly, told the court he did not believe the boy was asleep as a sleepwalker does not initiate violence because it is triggered by noise or touch.
Prosecutors said he had been awake shortly before the attacks, with an examination of his iPad showing he had been listening to music on Spotify, and that he had a fascination with serial killers.
‘Lucky to still be alive’
In his room, he kept a locked stash of what other pupils described as “weapons”, including shards of broken glass, screwdrivers and multiple hammers.
Police discovered he had carried out internet searches for “rampage killers”, “school massacres”, “murder with a hammer” and “killer kills while sleeping”.
He had sent alarming messages to one of his victims in the months before the attack – including a character from the horror film Texas Chainsaw Massacre wielding a hammer.
“These violent actions were repeated again and again,” said prosecutor James Dawes KC, and there was “no other explanation for his actions other than his intention to kill them”.
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Following his conviction, senior crown prosecutor Helen Phillips said the two boys were “lucky to still be alive”.
“The boy, who had a macabre interest in murder, serial killers, and violence, showed no remorse and naïvely thought that by concocting a story about sleepwalking at the time of the attack he could evade punishment,” she added.
The flying of St George’s flags across the country are creating “no-go” zones for NHS staff, with some facing frequent abuse, health bosses have warned.
Several NHS trust chief executives and leaders have said staff feel intimidated by the national symbols, including when they make home visits.
The findings follow a survey conducted among senior managers, 45% of whom were extremely concerned about discrimination towards staff.
A leader of a trust said anonymously that there were safety issues around how they work in the community, with nurses regularly visiting patients in their homes alone.
He said: “You’re going in on your own, you’re locking the door behind you.
“I have been into homes with people who have been convicted of sex offences, and we go in and provide care to them.
“It can be a really precarious situation, and they [the nurses] handle that absolutely brilliantly.
“The autonomy and the clinical decisions that they make within that, I think, is fantastic.
“We saw during the time when the flags went up – our staff, who are a large minority of black and Asian staff, feeling deliberately intimidated.
“It felt like the flags were up creating no-go zones. That’s what it felt like to them.
“You add that on top of real autonomous working, that real bravery of working in people’s homes, with an environment… [where] it feels like it’s an area that’s designed to exclude them.
“Our staff continue to work in that environment, and I think they deserve our real praise and thanks as a nation, frankly, for doing that within those really difficult circumstances.”
He added his trust had also seen “individual instances of aggression towards staff”.
File pic: iStock
Another NHS trust leader said a member of staff, who is white and has children of mixed heritage, had asked some people putting up flags to move so she could park her car.
“The individuals filmed what was happening, and then followed her, and she continued to receive abuse over a series of several days, not because she objected to the flags, but because she disturbed them,” they said.
“There are lots of stories like that. There are lots of stories where people have tried to take flags down outside of their own homes and have been abused and threatened as a consequence of that.”
The leader said the “springing up of flags everywhere has created another form of intimidation and concern for many, many of our staff”.
Daniel Elkes, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents trusts, said: “The NHS has relied on overseas recruitment for a long time to ensure we have the right workforce.
“We have a really diverse workforce and without that you can’t deliver the NHS.
“We are trying to recruit from the very places where we provide healthcare so the intake into the NHS is representative of British people from more diverse backgrounds.”
Professor Nicola Ranger, the Royal College of Nursing’s general secretary, said: “Following a summer of further racist disorder, it is little wonder a growing number of nursing staff report feeling unsafe, particularly when having to work on their own and often at night.
“The government and all politicians have to stop pandering to dangerous anti-migrant sentiments and employers must prioritise tackling racism and work with trade unions to develop stronger mechanisms to protect staff.”
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A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said there was “no place for intimidation, racism or abuse in our country or our NHS”, adding that threats and aggression should be reported to police.
They said the government valued the “diversity of our NHS”, and that workers “must be treated with dignity and respect”.
“Our flags represent our history, our heritage, and our values,” they said. “They are a symbol of our nation and belong to all of us – not just some of us.”
The survey findings come ahead of strike action by resident doctors over pay and jobs due to take place on Friday for five days.
A woman caught with £5bn in Bitcoin in the UK’s highest ever value money laundering investigation has been jailed for 11 years and eight months – after nearly five years on the run.
Zhimin Qian, 47, sat up in bed looking stunned when police kicked open the bedroom door of an Airbnb in a York suburb on 22 April last year.
She vanished and went on the run after officers seized more than 61,000 Bitcoin in the country’s biggest cryptocurrency seizure in a raid of her rented £5m home next to Hampstead Heath.
Qian – who fled China after carrying out a huge fraud and arrived in the UK in 2017 on a false St Kitts and Nevis passport in the name of Yadi Zhang – pleaded guilty to two money laundering offences at Southwark Crown Court.
Police said she styled herself the “Goddess of Wealth” and wore imperial robes as her sales teams offered 300% returns at conferences in luxury hotels in China promoting her “Britain Nice Life Insurance” scheme.
In a slick video played to targets, the narrator says “Britain is a nation of glories and dreams” over footage of the Houses of Parliament, Oxford University, Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and the City of London.
Qian was already wanted in China over two other scams when she orchestrated the gigantic investment fraud, conning more than 128,000 victims from every province out of 40bn Yuan (around £4.6bn) between 2014 and 2017.
More than 80 people have been convicted in China over the scam, but Qian converted some of the proceeds into more than 70,000 Bitcoin and fled, crossing the border into Myanmar on a moped before arriving at Heathrow Airport in September 2017.
Jian Wen. Pic: CPS
The women rented a £17,000-a-month house in Hampstead. Pic: CPS
She recruited Jian Wen, who left her job in a south London Chinese takeaway, and the women moved into a £17,000-a-month rented £5m house next to Hampstead Heath, posing as the bosses on an international jewellery business.
They travelled extensively across Europe, buying jewellery and spending tens of thousands of pounds on designer clothes and shoes in Harrods, while Wen bought a £25,000 E-Class Mercedes and sent her son to the £6,000-a-term Heathside preparatory school.
Qian made extensive notes about her “grandiose” plans to increase her social standing.
She wanted to meet a royal duke, hoped the Dalai Lama would anoint her as a reincarnated Goddess, and dreamed of ruling Liberland – an unrecognised micronation on the Croation side of the Danube – as Queen.
The women travelled extensively. Pic: Met Police
Wen tried to buy Hampstead property. Pic: Met Police
But the women came to the attention of police when they tried to buy a £24m seven-bedroom Hampstead mansion with a swimming pool, using more than £800,000 converted from Bitcoin.
Officers raided their home in October 2018 and seized £300,000 in cash and cheques, along with phones and laptops, and found a hand drawn “treasure map” leading from Harrods to a safety deposit box containing more devices.
When investigators finally accessed the cryptocurrency wallets stored on them, they thought someone had put the decimal point in the wrong place.
The 61,279 Bitcoin was then worth £1.4bn and has now soared to more than £5bn, making it the biggest ever cryptocurrency seizure in Britain and, until recently, the world.
Read more: How Chinese takeaway worker led police to biggest ever Bitcoin seizure
Police believed Qian had left the country, but shortly before Wen was found guilty of money laundering offences in March last year, Detective Constable Joe Ryan detected activity on a cryptocurrency exchange from a wallet linked to Qian, which hadn’t been used since 2019.
The exchange provided details of the account holder – Seng Hok Ling, a Malaysian national with a previous conviction for fraud in Hong Kong in 2015, who was living in Matlock, Derbyshire.
Seng Hok Ling arrives at a rented property. Pic: Met Police
Qian disguises her appearance while on the run. Pic: Met Police
Working on the theory he may be in contact with Qian, detectives stepped up the manhunt, which took them all over the UK, before they identified her at a detached house in a York suburb.
When police kicked open the upstairs bedroom door, there was Qian, lying under a bright red duvet and struggling to put on her top as she stared wide eyed at officers from behind her thick glasses.
Detective Constable Chris Woods told colleagues: “It’s her.”
A ledger and passwords found sewn inside a purpose-made concealed pocket in the jogging bottoms she was wearing, led investigators to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency worth around £67m.
Ling had helped her stay on the run, providing false documents and money laundering services, and renting Airbnb properties, including a house in Glasgow and a remote farmhouse near Loch Tay in the Scottish Highlands.
The court heard he tried to get one passport in the name of dead Hong Kong actress Dianxia Shen.
Staff made to sign confidentiality agreements. Pic: Met Police
A rotating entourage of cooks, drivers and security guards were employed on lucrative contracts to look after Qian, who they assumed was a rich recluse.
They were made to sign strict confidentiality agreements, which barred them from using Chinese devices or apps and photographing, recording or videoing “anyone or anything indoors or outdoors” – with breaches resulting in dismissal and fines of up to $30,000.
Metropolitan Police officers travelled to Beijing and Tianjin to speak to victims of the fraud, some of whom had lost their life savings, seen their family collapse or been left unable to pay for medical care.
Chinese police officers were lined up to become the first in history to give evidence in a UK court, but Qian pleaded guilty on the first day of the trial, while Ling also admitted a money laundering charge.
The court heard that since being in prison Qian has had poetry published and her artwork displayed at an exhibition.
Wen was jailed for six years and eight months last year, and the sentencing of Qian and Ling marks the end of what the Met’s head of economic and cyber crime called “one of the longest running and most complex economic crime investigations” in the force’s history.
“She lived, while she was on the run in the UK, a relatively reclusive lifestyle. She had that entourage of people around her, but she didn’t venture out much,” he said of Qian.
“And we have some understanding from some of her musings and some of thoughts around what she may do with the rest of her money and her wealth and her life ultimately.
“But thankfully, we were able to catch her and bring her to justice before some of those dreams were realised.”
The fortune is now at the centre of a High Court battle between the UK government and thousands of Chinese victims.
Prosecutors have set up a compensation scheme but lawyers representing those who want to recover their investments say it should reflect the huge rise in the value of Bitcoin and not just what they put in.
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