Healthcare worker killer will not be released

By The Press Association9th January 2015News EnglandMental Health, News England, Wotton Lawn Hospital

A paranoid schizophrenic who stabbed a healthcare assistant to death because he did not want to go to a no-smoking unit with no wi-fi will never be released, a judge said.

Ryan Matthews, 62, was already a double killer serving a life sentence when he brutally stabbed grandmother Sharon Wall twice in the back at Gloucester’s Wotton Lawn Hospital in July.

He was jailed at Exeter Crown Court in Devon in 1983, and served 16 years in prison before being sent to Broadmoor high security hospital in 1999 after being sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

He killed Mrs Wall, his third murder victim, by attacking her with a Sainsbury’s kitchen knife he managed to smuggle into the hospital around eight months previously, as she made her morning rounds alone.

The court heard he was due to be moved that day to a different hospital which did not allow smoking and had no wi-fi, and killed the 53-year-old so he would be sent back to prison instead.

It also heard that Matthews, who believed he was possessed by the devil, was in the unit in anticipation of being released on licence.

But there were problems with him not taking his medication, which was behind his planned move to a Welsh unit.

Sentencing Matthews to a whole-life order, Mr Justice Davis, at Bristol Crown Court, told Mrs Wall’s family, who were in the public gallery: “Obviously that man will never be released. Let us hope that he does not kill someone else in some other setting when he does not get his own way.”