Pensioner stabbed and butchered by former paper boy
FRAIL pensioner Mabel Leyshon died in a brutal and bizarre attack which bore all the signs of a grotesque black magic ritual.
Vampire-obsessed Mathew Hardman stabbed the 90-year-old widow more than 20 times in the back and chest cuts on her hands showed that she had tried to defend herself then moved her from her armchair so he could mutilate her body and rip out her heart.
Hardman, then 17, who lived just a few yards away and had been Mrs Leyshon's paper boy, had already dropped a chilling hint of what was to come during a conversation with a teenage German girl student on an exchange visit to his home town of Llanfairpwll, on the island of Anglesey.
He told her he believed it was "a perfect place for vampires" as there were many old people there, and if any of them died after being bitten, it would be assumed they had had a heart attack.
He had also said to the girl "it wouldn't matter too much" if he killed an old person and had accused the girl of being a vampire and asked her to bite him.
He made his gruesome fantasy a reality on the night of November 24 last, when his mother and her partner were away.
Hardman, wearing gloves, walked the few hundred yards from his home to Ger-y-Twr, Mrs Leyshon's neat bungalow home in a road called Lon Pant.
She was sitting in her favourite armchair, her back to the lounge door, watching television with the sound turned up because of her growing deafness.
Mrs Leyshon did not hear a thing as six-foot-tall Hardmen threw a slate through a glass panel of the back door and eased himself into the kitchen.
The art student went into the living room and launched a ferocious attack on the old lady with a knife he had taken from the kitchen of his own home. Mrs Leyshon did not stand a chance.
After the killing, Hardman moved her body from her favourite armchair to a different chair and propped her legs on a stool.
At some stage, he arranged two brass pokers in the shape of a cross on the floor in front of the pensioner's body, placed two candlesticks near the corpse and balanced a candle on the mantelpiece.
He sliced Mrs Leyshon's chest open and cut her heart out before wrapping the organ in newspaper and putting it in a saucepan from her kitchen. The saucepan was then placed on a silver platter.
Hardman also made three gashes in Mrs Leyshon's leg and drained blood into the saucepan, from which he then drank.
The murder was discovered the following day when worried neighbours called police.
Detective decided they were looking for a loner, probably a local no suspicious vehicles had been seen in the area who might not be known to police.
But it was not until late December that details of the ritualistic elements of the murder the brass cross and the mutilation emerged.
Those disclosures sparked calls reminding officers that Hardman had earlier been arrested after accusing the German girl student of being a vampire, and for trying to make her bite him so he could become one.
Six weeks after Mrs Leyshon's death, officers searched Hardman's bedroom, where they found books, magazines and internet material devoted to vampires.
Among the books was Bram Stoker's Dracula, and a hardback library book entitled The Devil: An Autobiography.
There were also two copies of the magazine Bizarre, which featured articles on how to cook and eat human flesh and how to create a Black Mass.
Examination of Hardman's computer showed that he had logged on to websites including The Vampire Rights Movement and The Vampire/Donor.
The site claims: "The site exists to serve all who might be part of vampire community: gothic lifestyle vampires and non-lifestyle vampires alike, energy feeders, sanguinarians (drinkers of blood); donors, would-be donors, and other loved ones."
Hardman, a dyslexic, would have had difficulty reading the books, and it could have been argued that the magazines and internet material were simply tongue-in-cheek sick humour.
But the pointer to the terrible truth about the fresh-faced teenager was an incident on September 22 last year, two months before Mrs Leyshon's murder.
Hardman had finished the evening shift at Carreg Bran Hotel, where he worked as a waiter and kitchen porter, before going to the lodgings of his friend David Lam, a Chinese student then aged 18.
The 16-year-old German girl, who was on an exchange trip to improve her English, was staying in a separate room at the same address.
Hardman had been introduced to the girl, who gave evidence at the trial, and she was happy to let him into her room for a chat when he knocked at her door.
The pair sat on the girl's bed and talked about "gothic" fashion, vampires, life after death and other paranormal subjects for several hours.
Then, out of the blue, Hardman accused the girl of being "one of them" and begged her to bite his neck so that he too could become a vampire.
When she refused, he became violent and began pressing his neck against her mouth, insisting that she should bite him.
The distressed girl's cries for help eventually alerted the landlady and Mr Lam, who both tried to throw Hardman out of the house.
By this time, Hardman was accusing anyone in sight of being a vampire. He deliberately punched himself on the nose to draw blood in a bid to "tempt" them to bite him.
Police were called and as an officer handcuffed Hardman, he said repeatedly "bite my neck".
Hardman told the court he had smoked cannabis before going into the girl's room and could not remember anything about vampires and neck-biting.
