Subject: Church Worker Jailed for Life After Axe Murder
http://dailynews.netscape.com/news/OddlyEnough/02_24_2000.reodd-story-bcoddaxe.html
Church Worker Jailed for Life After Axe Murder
LONDON (Reuters) - A British church worker who decapitated his
son's former lover with an axe was found guilty of murder Thursday
and jailed for life by a British court.
Anthony Phillips, a 43-year-old church steward from Wolverhampton
in central England, chopped off the head of his next-door neighbor
Lorraine Howell after he discovered she had given birth to a baby girl
fathered by his son Jamie.
The court heard that Phillips, described as a deeply religious man,
thought he was doing God's work in killing Howell, who he claimed had
raped Jamie when she was 34 and he was just 15.
Howell's two children were in the house when Phillips attacked her.
"I...took the axe and hit her with it repeatedly, like some kind of
frenzy," a police statement read to the court cited Phillips as saying.
"There was blood everywhere."
"God does not want people like that on earth and I had to remove
that person from the Earth," he said.
Sentencing Philips at Birmingham Crown Court the judge said Phillips
had destroyed the lives of his family and those of the victim's family by
committing the murder.
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Fri, 25 Feb 2000 00:38:47 GMT
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