A British man, the heir to a pie company fortune, has been sentenced to jail for life for murdering his childhood friend by stabbing him 37 times on Christmas Eve in 2023. He has been jailed for at least 19 years before any chance of release, reported news agency PA.
The chilling murder happened on December 24, 2023, when Dylan Thomas, the accused, asked his grandmother to drive him to Llandaff, Cardiff, where he stayed with the victim and his childhood friend William Bush. He told his grandmother that he wanted to walk his dog, Bruce. However, after entering the house, Thomas stabbed Bush 37 times, including in the neck, chest, head and back. He came outside the home, covered in blood, and banged on the car door in which his grandmother was waiting for him. The people on the street heard “screams of horror” coming from the home when the crime took place. According to the court, Thomas looked up the anatomy of the neck on the internet before attacking Bush.
During the time of the murder, Bush was 23 years old and the accused Thomas is now 24 years old.
Thomas is the grandson of pie company tycoon Sir Stanley Thomas, who is the founder of Peter’s Pies and has a net worth estimated to be £230 million as of 2013, the report added. Thomas’s grandfather sat through the hearing.
Who was William Bush
According to his sister Catrin, William Bush was a “loyal, funny and caring person”. He “lit up every room he walked into with his cheeky grin and quick-witted humour,” she said. Bush’s girlfriend Ella Jefferies said that they were planning a future together. “To lose a person that you love so unexpectedly and in such a horrific way has left an indescribable pain and a darkness in my life…The chance for Will and I to reach and celebrate milestones in life together, such as marriage, buying a house, having children and continuing to explore life and be happy together, has been taken from us, including the chance for our parents to become grandparents and sisters and brothers become aunties and uncles to our children. Will was the love of my life and meant everything to me,” she told the court
Bush was a sportsperson and played golf for his country. He was friends with Thomas for around a decade. They were around 13 when they met at a private boarding and day school in mid-Wales Christ College Brecon.
Addressing the Cardiff Crown Court about the murder of his son, Bush’s father said, “The knowledge Will lost his life in the most unnecessary and pitiful manner, not dying as we all would wish, surrounded by those we loved, but 50 years before his time. The victim of someone he thought of as a friend, hurts us beyond words.”
Bush’s sister called his murder a “barbaric crime” and said that he was going to return home to celebrate Christmas with his family.
Addressing the accused Thomas, Catrin said that he expressed no remorse throughout the hearing and called him “cruel, manipulative, heartless, and evil”. “You inflicted so much suffering on our innocent little brother, Will, and you have taken Will’s bright future away from him. I hope you’ll never be released back into the community and you live out the rest of your years in prison,” she said.
The hearing
Thomas is undergoing treatment for schizophrenia in Liverpool’s Ashworth Hospital, from where he appeared before the court virtually. The PA report says that he did not show any emotion during the hearing and only spoke when asked if he could hear the judge.
According to Dr Panchu Xavier, a consultant forensic psychiatrist at Ashworth, there is a possibility that Thomas was going through a psychotic episode when the attack happened and also “up to six months before the event.”
Prior to murdering his friend, Thomas was also arrested for breaking into London’s Buckingham Palace and told officers that he was looking for “energy fields” between the Palace and Cleopatra’s Needle, an obelisk in central London, the report added.
Thomas’ defender Orlando Pownall KC said before the court that his client probably committed a crime in a fit of rage and did not actually plan it. “What we submit is probably what happened here, a loss of temper and mitigates against a significant amount of planning and premeditation,” Pownall said.
The sentence
The sentence was passed by Justice Steyn who admitted that while schizophrenia lowers Thomas’ culpability, it did not amount to a defense in law to murder. “Will was a talented young man with a bright future ahead of him…He did well at school and at university. He was a passionate sportsman and gifted golfer who played for the country. He and Ella were planning for a future together. You took a son away from his mother and father, you bereaved the woman he loved with whom he was planning his future. You deprived his sister and brother of their young brother,” she said while passing the sentence.
“I am satisfied that as a result of your schizophrenia, your ability to form a rational judgment was impaired, albeit not the substantial level required to establish the defense of diminished responsibility,” she added.
With PA inputs.
