Addict’s Conviction For Murders Sparks Call For Drugs Education

The murder of two schoolfriends by an habitual cannabis user has led to calls for the Government to conduct a public health campaign about the danger of the drug.

Tom Palmer, 20, received two life sentences at Reading Crown Court yesterday for stabbing to death Steven Bayliss, 16, and Nuttawut Nadauld, 14.

The court was told that Palmer, who had a fascination with knives and regularly watched violent films, had first tried cannabis at the age of 14. By his 15th birthday he was smoking it every day.

In September 2005 he armed himself with a 6½close tonear his home in Wokingham, Berkshire. He almost decapitated Steven and stabbed Nuttawut — who was known as T-Wood — in the chest.

Palmer admitted the manslaughter of the boys but denied murder, claiming that he was suffering an “abnormality of mind”. The prosecution rejected his claim, saying that cannabis caused any psychotic symptoms he had displayed.

The court was told Palmer had bought the knife with which he killed the boys from a local sports shop. His girlfriend, Ruth Cunningham, 17, said that he would often watch horror films, usually involving martial arts. In the days before the deaths, Palmer repeatedly watched a DVD of The Last Horror Movie, about a serial killer who filmed himself stabbing his victims to death, the court was told. “It was about this guy who kills people and he keeps a video of it,” she said. “He said it was a wicked film — wicked as in cool.”

After the murders Palmer told doctors that cannabis had worsened his anxiety and that he had started seeing and hearing things. He would talk of hearing the voices of friends, even nobody was there.

Palmer said he had begun to feel as if “bad people were going to do bad things” to him and started to arm himself against imagined aggressors. Once, he and a friend carved swastikas into their chests because, he said, “they had been influenced by a film”. By the time of the killings he was proficient in martial arts.

Dr Philip Joseph, a prosecution witness, told the court: “He has experienced some psychotic symptoms likely to be induced by cannabis.”

After the verdicts were read out, Palmer called out to the public gallery: “I’m sorry, sorry.”

Mr Justice David Bean said that Palmer must serve a minimum of 20 years. He said Palmer was suffering from a mental disorder, “namely an anxiety state”, which “to a limited extent lowers what would otherwise be your degree of culpability, even though it was insufficient to establish the defence of diminished responsibility“.

In a victim impact statement read to the court, Steven’s mother, Janet, said that she still had not changed the sheets on his bed. “It’s our only connection to him.

“Steven was so noisy and full of life, rushing around, laughing and playing loud music. No one laughs any more. No one wants to be here any more.”

Rethink, a mental health charity, called on the Government to fund a campaign telling people of the risks of cannabis use. The Home Office said yesterday that cannabis use had fallen by almost a quarter since 1988 and the decline had been largely among young people. An information campaign had shown how the drug damaged the brain.