G
garrick92
Guest
Absolutely Hideous and Disturbing "Prank-Gone-Wrong"
THREE CLEARED OVER 'JOKE' EMAIL TO KNIFE HORROR FATHER
"Three workers have been cleared of forgery after sending joke emails about a fake business trip to a rival. The man later had a mental breakdown and stabbed his 12-year-old daughter to death. Andy Hall, from Monmouthshire, plunged a 14-inch carving knife into his daughter Emma's heart the day he returned from the made-up business trip to India in June 2000.
Jeremy Aston, Raymond Ball and Ivan Lucas, from a rival firm, admitted sending emails to Mr Hall about meeting a non-existent client in India, but insisted it was a practical joke. Hall took the emails seriously and travelled to India to attend the meeting, only to find it was not real.
At Cardiff Crown Court, the jury, which was not told of the death of Hall's daughter, found the trio not guilty after about two hours of deliberation. Mr Aston, 44, of Rhiwbina, Cardiff; Mr Ball, 40, of Thornhill, Cardiff, and Mr Lucas, 31, of Monmouth; had denied one count of forgery between May 17, 2000, and July 20, 2000. Hall, previously of Mountview, Whitelye, Catbrook in Monmouthshire was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity at his trial in December 2000 and remains in hospital.
Following his trial in December 2000, his family issued a statement blaming the emails as the "catalyst for this tragedy", but Judge Christopher Llewellyn Jones QC said the incidents were not linked. The three men sent the emails to their former employer, for which Andy Hall worked, the medical testing equipment company Molecular Light Technology, based in Cardiff, as part of an office joke.
They pretended to be a non-existent Indian businessman called Dr Sunil Hankawanka who was interesting in the supply of benzene testing kits. Messages, to which Hall began to reply, were sent by the trio in bad, broken English, once requesting a translation from Mr Hall into Urdu. After leaving MLT, Ball and Aston had set up their own company, AB Biomonitoring, and computer worker Lucas joined them at a later date. Ball told the court that he was concerned for the security of his emails being sent to an old MLT mail box and sent the messages to the company as a test of its integrity. More than 30 emails were eventually sent between Andy Hall and "Dr Hankawanka" and Hall eventually arranged to travel to India, but discovered the doctor did not exist after arriving in the country.
Returning to the UK, paranoid schizophrenic Hall, who thought he was Jesus Christ, killed his daughter less than 12 hours after arriving home. The teenager was asleep in her bed when Hall attacked her in the belief she would come back to life after her death. He had planned to kill his entire family including his wife Karen and his son James, then 10, and commit suicide believing this would save 15 other Christian families from death. But Hall's wife and his son fled the house in a fit of panic believing her husband was trying to also kill James.
[Speechless]
THREE CLEARED OVER 'JOKE' EMAIL TO KNIFE HORROR FATHER
"Three workers have been cleared of forgery after sending joke emails about a fake business trip to a rival. The man later had a mental breakdown and stabbed his 12-year-old daughter to death. Andy Hall, from Monmouthshire, plunged a 14-inch carving knife into his daughter Emma's heart the day he returned from the made-up business trip to India in June 2000.
Jeremy Aston, Raymond Ball and Ivan Lucas, from a rival firm, admitted sending emails to Mr Hall about meeting a non-existent client in India, but insisted it was a practical joke. Hall took the emails seriously and travelled to India to attend the meeting, only to find it was not real.
At Cardiff Crown Court, the jury, which was not told of the death of Hall's daughter, found the trio not guilty after about two hours of deliberation. Mr Aston, 44, of Rhiwbina, Cardiff; Mr Ball, 40, of Thornhill, Cardiff, and Mr Lucas, 31, of Monmouth; had denied one count of forgery between May 17, 2000, and July 20, 2000. Hall, previously of Mountview, Whitelye, Catbrook in Monmouthshire was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity at his trial in December 2000 and remains in hospital.
Following his trial in December 2000, his family issued a statement blaming the emails as the "catalyst for this tragedy", but Judge Christopher Llewellyn Jones QC said the incidents were not linked. The three men sent the emails to their former employer, for which Andy Hall worked, the medical testing equipment company Molecular Light Technology, based in Cardiff, as part of an office joke.
They pretended to be a non-existent Indian businessman called Dr Sunil Hankawanka who was interesting in the supply of benzene testing kits. Messages, to which Hall began to reply, were sent by the trio in bad, broken English, once requesting a translation from Mr Hall into Urdu. After leaving MLT, Ball and Aston had set up their own company, AB Biomonitoring, and computer worker Lucas joined them at a later date. Ball told the court that he was concerned for the security of his emails being sent to an old MLT mail box and sent the messages to the company as a test of its integrity. More than 30 emails were eventually sent between Andy Hall and "Dr Hankawanka" and Hall eventually arranged to travel to India, but discovered the doctor did not exist after arriving in the country.
Returning to the UK, paranoid schizophrenic Hall, who thought he was Jesus Christ, killed his daughter less than 12 hours after arriving home. The teenager was asleep in her bed when Hall attacked her in the belief she would come back to life after her death. He had planned to kill his entire family including his wife Karen and his son James, then 10, and commit suicide believing this would save 15 other Christian families from death. But Hall's wife and his son fled the house in a fit of panic believing her husband was trying to also kill James.
[Speechless]
) Sad as often in these cases, the warnings signs are there but not picked up or acted upon in time.
