FAMILY BLAST SENTENCE FOR CROSS-DRESSING PSYCHO KILLER
THE family of a woman murdered in the shower Psycho- style by her cross-dressing fiancé have slammed his 17-year sentence.
Roderick Deakin-White, 38, beat Amy Parsons, 35, to death with a metal bar while she was showering in a flat they shared in Whitechapel, east London.
She was left naked and bleeding to death after suffering “horrific injuries” to her head, face and brain during the attack on April 25.
Deakin-White was found guilty of her murder on November 19.
Sentencing Deakin-White at Snaresbrook Crown Court, judge John Lafferty said that Ms Parsons was killed in a “most horrendous, savage and brutal way”.
He added: “Your view was if you can’t have her, no-one can have her, and you killed her.
“There is no sentence I can pass upon you that will bring back Miss Parsons – a young, successful, vivacious and kind-hearted young woman, whose life was brutally taken by you.”
Intimate
Judge Lafferty jailed Deakin-White for a minimum of 17 years, reduced by 210 days which he has already served in custody.
During his trial, the court heard how personal assistant Ms Parsons had become unhappy with her relationship, particularly due to Deakin-White’s interest in cross-dressing.
Prosecutor Gareth Patterson QC said at a previous hearing: “She was unhappy about this and this was something he had often wanted to do when they were intimate.”
He told jurors that Deakin-White became angry and jealous after Ms Parsons began a relationship with her colleague James Saunders a few weeks before the killing.
The prosecutor said Deakin-White launched the attack after she told him she was leaving him.
“Unwilling to accept that she was going to leave him, he used a metal bar to hit her repeatedly around the head while she was showering,” Mr Patterson said.
Deakin-White fled the Docklands flat before confessing to a friend, who persuaded him to hand himself in.
Speaking after the sentencing, Ms Parsons’s sister, Eve, 40, said that her family was “disappointed” by the length of the jail term and would be lodging an appeal, adding: “Seventeen years does not do her justice.”