Brian Blackwell was born in 1986 to parents Sydney and Jacqueline Blackwell. The family lived in Melling, Merseyside, England. Brian was an only child and a bit of a loner growing up, but the few friends he did have called him ‘The Brain’ due to how well he did at school. He did his A-Levels at Liverpool College and decided he wanted to be a surgeon.
One unfortunate trait of Blackwell’s was that he liked to lie. He met his girlfriend Amal Saba at college and convinced her that he was a professional tennis player who had a lucrative Nike contract and a spot in the French Open. In April 2004, Blackwell wrote Amal a cheque for £39,000. It was the salary for being his manager. The cheque bounced because he only had 9p in his account. In an attempt to keep up appearances, Blackwell went to the bank in May and withdrew £9,000. The money was from an investment account his parents set up for him to pay for his university education. He convinced the bank to give him the money by telling them that his father had died. He used the money to buy Amal a brand new £6,500 Ford Ka. His parents found out and his parents were unsurprisingly shocked and angry. They wanted Amal to return the car but in the end, after a lot of arguments, agreed that she could keep the car so long as the money was paid back.
Needing more money to fund his lavish lies, Blackwell made numerous applications for credit cards and loans. When his mother found out in June 2004, she went to the bank to speak to the manager about his worrying behaviour.
On July 24, 2004, Blackwell used his father’s credit card to buy first-class plane tickets to New York for him and Amal. The next day, his father, seemingly unaware of his son’s actions, spoke to friends about how proud he was of his son and his hard work to achieve good A-level results.
On July 25, 2044, Blackwell was at home hanging pictures in his bedroom. His parents got home from dinner and they all sat together in the living room for some drinks. An argument ensued between Blackwell and his father. Blackwell, in a fit of rage, began beating his father with a hammer. His mother ran into the room from the kitchen, carrying a knife. She tried to stop her son but he wrestled the knife from her and stabbed her 30 times in the chest, killing her. He turned his attention back to his father. He held his father’s hand and told him he was sorry before stabbing him to death.
After killing both his parents, Brian Blackwell went on his pre-planned holiday to America with his girlfriend. They stayed in the presidential suite in The Plaza Hotel for three nights. They then went to Miami, San Francisco, and Barbados. Blackwell spent £30,000 on his father’s credit cards on the trip.
On August 12, 2004, Blackwell and Saba returned to England. Blackwell stayed with Saba’s parents, claiming that he was locked out of his home whilst his parents were on holiday in Majorca. A week later he got his A-level results, and he had been accepted into Nottingham University to study medicine that October.
The Blackwells would regularly holiday in Spain, so no one thought it was strange when they didn’t see them for a while. On September 5, 2004, a neighbour went to visit and noticed an unpleasant smell coming from the house so called the police.
When police arrived at the home they discovered the bodies of Sydney and Jacqueline Blackwell. Due to decomposition, initially, police thought the couple had been shot. Mr Blackwell was in the living room in an armchair. Mrs Blackwell had been dragged to the bathroom and left face down on the floor.
Blackwell was arrested for questioning on September 8, 2004. Being immediately family it wasn’t out of the norm for him to be considered a suspect.
During questioning, Blackwell claimed he couldn’t have killed his parents because he was on holiday, but did ask “Is prison cold?”. Eventually, he broke down and admitted to what he had done. He said it was a “split-second thing” and that he “just couldn’t believe what I’d done.”
Nine months after his arrest, in June 2005, Brian Blackwell’s trial started at Liverpool Crown Court. A team of five psychiatrists unanimously agreed that Blackwell had Narcissistic Personality Disorder. People with NPD often fantasise about power and success and can fly into a fit of rage if their fantasies are threatened or challenged. They are selfish and entitled. The reason NPD sufferers are so convincing is that they believe their fantasies. Prosecutor David Steer described Blackwell as “A highly abnormal young man”. He pointed out that NPD isn’t ordinarily diagnosed so young. Because of this, the double murder charges that Brian Blackwell was facing were dropped and instead, he pled guilty to manslaughter due to diminished responsibility.
In a letter, Blackwell wrote: “For every moment of every day I wish I could turn back the hands of time. I eternally long to be a little boy again at a time when everyone really loved each other, when we could have a happy time and be a family once more… I miss them more than anything in the world. The guilt will punish and haunt me for 24 hours a day for the rest of my life.”
On June 29, 2005, Brian Blackwell was found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 12 years. Although the Judge presiding over the case said he didn’t think he would ever be fit for release, in 2016 Brian Blackwell was granted his release by the parole board.
Sources:
https://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/crime-files/brian-blackwell
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jun/30/ukcrime.helencarter
https://murderpedia.org/male.B/b/blackwell-brian.htm
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/day-killed-mum-dad-3525266
