I contemplate killing my family all day and night...
Son’s claim before knife attack on his mother and top hotelier partner
‘Hatred of the very worst kind’
A SON who stabbed his mother and killed her partner had told a friend he would ‘contemplate murdering them all morning, day and night’, a court heard yesterday.
Thomas Schreiber, 35, launched a frenzied knife attack on multi-millionaire hotelier Sir Richard Sutton, 83, and Anne Schreiber, 66, in April.
Schreiber, who had been living with them for about a year, had told friends of his intention to harm his ‘toxic’ and ‘golddigging’ mother and said he wanted ‘them to suffer’.
The attack began in the kitchen of Sir Richard’s £2million country estate, Moorhill, where Mrs Schreiber suffered stab wounds ‘numbering into the double figures’, Winchester Crown Court heard.
Schreiber then selected a second knife and stalked the wounded Sir Richard through the sprawling countryside property, stabbing him another five times.
Police were alerted after Schreiber confessed to others he had killed them both at the mansion in Higher Langham, near Gillingham, on April 7.
He was finally arrested after a highspeed car chase through Dorset to west London, where police carried out a ‘hard stop’ manoeuvre to halt his vehicle.
Schreiber had sent a message to a friend a month before the killings confessing to his deep-seated hatred of his family.
It read: ‘I’m so sad to report that my mind is consumed with hatred of the very worst kind towards my family. They really hurt me, betrayed me and destroyed all trust.
‘Simply put I contemplate murdering them all morning, day and night. It’s not what I want to think about but it’s the truth. I want them to suffer.’
Sir Richard was pronounced dead at the scene. Mrs Schreiber was found ‘barely conscious and dying’ and was taken to Southmead Hospital in Bristol. Paramedics were forced to restart her heart after she went into cardiac arrest on her way to hospital. She survived with ‘severe and life-changing injuries’.
Schreiber has denied charges of murder and attempted murder but has previously admitted manslaughter. Adam Feest QC, prosecuting, told the court: ‘[Schreiber] had been harbouring increasingly strong feelings of resentment and hatred towards his mother and her partner.’
He said the son’s state of mind was ‘built upon a foundation of many years of feeling isolated and unfairly treated by all his family, and fed by being forced to live at Moorhill due to the pandemic’.
Mr Feest added: ‘These feelings had led the defendant to repeatedly consider revenge and violence against his “toxic” and “gold-digging” mother and Sir Richard, a man he told a friend he couldn’t stand and didn’t have a good word to say about. Moorhill had been the setting of a ferocious and sustained attack by the defendant upon his two victims.
‘It was an attack that left Anne Schreiber barely conscious and dying on the floor of the kitchen... it was the multiple stab wounds to her back – numbering into double figures – that were the main source of the significant blood loss that she was suffering from.
‘As the police went around the house, they came across [Sir Richard’s] motionless and bloodied body at the end of the upstairs landing just outside his bedroom.’
After the attack, Schreiber went to his annexe above the property’s garage to change his clothing and collect some personal effects before fleeing the scene in a Range Rover, the court heard.
Sir Richard had two children by his wife Fiamma, and five grandchildren. He was listed at number 435 in the Sunday Times Rich List last year, with an estimated family fortune of £301million – up £83million on the previous year.
His company owned London hotels including the Sheraton Grand Park Lane and the Athenaeum, as well as numerous other establishments. Mrs Schreiber, a physiotherapist, has three adult children. The case continues.