Jailed, father who killed ‘hero’ son, 10
Dad gets 16 years for stabbing his boy... who died trying to protect little girl from ‘brutal’ attack
A FORMER soldier who fatally stabbed his sleeping son and attempted to murder another child to ‘save them from evil’ has been jailed for 16 years.
Karl Morris, 38, knifed himself five times and leapt out of a third-floor window following the attack.
He was previously charged with murdering his ten-year-old son Kane, who bravely tried to save the girl before collapsing.
But prosecutors accepted a plea of culpable homicide on the basis of diminished responsibility. Morris also admitted attempting to murder an eight-year-old girl. When questioned by detectives, he told them: ‘I was taking them to a better place away from evil.’
The High Court in Aberdeen yesterday heard that he had a history of ‘catastrophic decision making’ when under stress. At the time of the attacks, in the early hours of November 11 last year at a flat in Coupar Angus, Perthshire, Morris was also paranoid, fearing that paedophiles were living nearby and were a threat to the children.
Referring to a psychological report, defence advocate Stephen Hughes said: ‘Both psychologists instructed by the Crown and the defence agree that at the time [he] was suffering an abnormality of the mind. What appears to be genuine amnesia has clearly hampered efforts to explain this behaviour.’
The court heard the episodes of dealing badly with stress went back to Morris’s time in the Army, including fighting with an officer and going absent without leave.
Mr Hughes added: ‘His behaviour at the time may be an example of his catastrophic decision making. I’m almost definite his most severe punishment will be his own mind.’
Morris broke down in tears in the dock as Lord Mulholland sentenced him to 16 years in jail. The judge said: ‘You pled guilty to brutal and horrific crimes.
‘When your son and another child were laying in bed while under your care and expected to be safe, you stabbed them.
‘You inflicted these horrific injuries on these children and now you will pay a heavy price.’
The court heard previously that Kane, a pupil at Coupar Angus Primary School, tried to help the girl before collapsing with fatal injuries.
Morris, who was in the Army for five years, worked as a farmhand in the family business in Coupar Angus.
At 1.52am on the night of the attacks, his niece, Iona McPherson, made a one-minute drunken call to him. Minutes later, Morris stabbed Kane and the girl ‘to protect [them against] some impending mortal danger’, his lawyer said. The girl suffered a collapsed lung and spent four weeks in hospital.
The court also heard Morris was struggling to cope after his stepfather died in an accident on the farm last year.
Speaking outside court, Kane’s mother, Morris’s ex-wife Laura Ann Gillies, said: ‘Today’s outcome hasn’t changed the sentence I face – a life without my beautiful son. Kane was and still is the bravest and most heroic person I have known and will be forever absent from our lives. I’m proud to call him my son.
‘Days and nights I’ve spent blaming myself. I’m a mother who failed to protect her child and that guilt is weight greater than anyone could ever imagine.
‘I’d like to pay a heartfelt thanks to my family for their continued loving support. Had it not been for them, I would not be standing here today.’
Morris’s sentence was backdated to November 2018 when he was first remanded.
‘Brutal and horrific crimes’