Man guilty of plotting to stab step-parents in their sleep

A MAN was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order yesterday after plotting to kill his adoptive parents with a friend he met on the internet just three months earlier.

Christopher Monks, 25, persuaded Shaun Skarnes, 20, to stab the couple while they were asleep at their home in Chorley, Lancashire.

The plan was scuppered when Monks’s father, also Christopher, woke to find Skarnes in his bedroom with a large kitchen knife and the couple managed to disarm him.

Skarnes, of Ellesmere Port, Merseyside, will serve an indeterminate term for public protection and cannot be considered for parole for at least three and a half years.

Monks and his wife Elizabeth fully supported their son, who was adopted at the age of 10 months, at his trial last July and remain adamant he did not intend to take their lives.

They argued he suffered from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, and was unable to separate fantasy from reality.

In a series of online exchanges, Monks told Skarnes he wanted his parents dead because he said they were over-protective and treated him like a child.

Both men argued they were acting as part of a role play, but a jury at Preston Crown Court disagreed and found them guilty of conspiracy to murder after barely one hour of deliberation.

Sentencing the pair at Preston Crown Court, Mr Justice McCombe said it was a “most unusual case’. Referring to Mr and Mrs Monks, he said: “No court could fail to be moved by the unstinting love they have for their son, notwithstanding the enormity of the offence he committed. In their own words in a letter sent to me they say ‘Whatever sentence is passed, we will serve it with him’.”

But he added that he did not have the “slightest hesitation” in believing both men continued to present a “significant” risk of harm to the public.

He agreed with psychiatric reports which said Monks would not flourish in the prison system and could only be properly rehabilitated in a secure hospital environment with specialist care to treat his condition.

Both exchanged online and mobile phone messages about the meticulously prepared plan, even to the extent of discussing which side the parents slept on.

Skarnes, of Sutton Way, pretended to catch a train home after visiting the Monks’s four-bedroom property in Preston Road, Clayton-le-Woods, last February, but his co-defendant later let him back in late at night and handed his accomplice the knife.

Monks, a bisexual, ran away from home three years ago when his parents found out he was seeing an older man, who he also met online. They confiscated his mobile phone and restricted his internet usage.

He messaged Skarnes that he considered his family “a disgrace”, he was “trapped in a cage” and complained “the only time I get to myself is when they are asleep, so eternal rest is the best solution”.

Skarnes took him up on the offer to kill the couple, in return for sexual favours, shortly after their first contact.