KNIFE KILLER MUM JAILED
STABBED MAN IN ROW AT HOUSE
A MUM stabbed a man to death after a fight broke out when he entered a house uninvited.
Leanne Bentley, 28, has been jailed for almost seven years for killing 51-yearold Peter Richardson in Wythenshawe.
She admitted manslaughter on the grounds of loss of control.
Bentley stabbed Mr Richardson in the back after he had attacked her.
“I know Peter wasn’t perfect but he didn’t deserve to die in the way he did,” Mr Richardson’s wife Julie said.
Bentley had been drinking at a friend’s house when Mr Richardson, who had known her friend for years, ‘let himself into’ the property.
A court was told Mr Richardson would often let himself in, and while the household ‘tolerated’ his behaviour, some regarded him as a ‘nuisance’.
He was given a bottle of beer in the hope that he would then leave, prosecutors said. Bentley then emerged from the toilet to find Mr Richardson, who was described as ‘intoxicated’ after he had taken cocaine and Xanax.
She thought he must have ‘just helped himself’ to the beer which she had bought, prosecutor Mark Ford QC told Manchester Crown Court.
Bentley ‘snatched’ it back from Mr Richardson, who then kicked her.
Then she left the property on Greenwood Road. He followed and a fight broke out in the garden, at about 11pm on May 20. Punches were exchanged, and Bentley’s lawyer said she threw blows in ‘self defence’.
She was being warned that Mr Richardson had been known to carry a knife, and was seen ‘fumbling for something’ as if he was going to arm himself, the court was told.
Bentley picked up a plastic garden chair to ‘defend herself’.
A neighbour saw the fighting and asked them to stop as it was ‘scaring’ his children.
The fracas stopped, with Bentley going back towards the house and Mr Richardson walking away.
Moments later, Bentley than ran towards him and stabbed him once in the back after arming herself with a kitchen knife. He fell to the ground, but was able to walk away, only to collapse again shortly after. Mr Richardson was pronounced dead at 3am.
At first, doctors believed he may have died as a result of an overdose, with no obvious external bleeding.
In text messages Bentley sent after his death which were later recovered by police, she said she was ‘scared as f***’.
“It’s all hitting me now today,” she said. “Don’t know what I’m going to do to be honest anymore.”
More than a week later, on May 29, she was arrested.
A stab wound to Mr Richardson’s back was discovered, and a pathologist found he had suffered ‘massive internal bleeding’. Prosecutors accepted her plea to manslaughter on the grounds of a loss of self control.
Sentencing Bentley to six years and nine months in jail, Judge Nicholas Dean QC said: “No matter the character of Peter Richardson, no matter his behaviour, his death is no less a tragedy for those who loved him. The events were confusing, frightening and led to a highly charged, febrile atmosphere. That atmosphere was caused by the behaviour of Mr Richardson, and particularly by the violence that was used by him.”
But referencing Bentley’s attack, the judge added: “This was not in truth a spontaneous and immediate response to the provocation.”
Bentley’s lawyer Richard Littler QC said it was a ‘classic loss of self control’ case. “The reality is the deceased was inside that property unlawfully,” he said.
The sentencing hearing heard a statement from Julie Richardson, Mr Richardson’s wife of 27 years.
She said: “I cannot understand how stabbing someone in the back is not murder. I want her (Bentley) to feel how I feel.”
She added: “I feel that it is me who has been given a life sentence without my husband.”