Son ‘like a stranger as he stabbed me’ says paralysed mum
A MOTHER has told a court how her son was like ‘a total stranger’ as he repeatedly stabbed her and killed her millionaire hotelier partner.
Anne Schreiber, 66, was left paralysed from the neck down after son Thomas Schreiber, 35, stabbed her up to 15 times, Winchester Crown Court heard.
Her partner Sir Richard Sutton, 83, died after being stabbed through the heart.
Mrs Schreiber said she had been in the kitchen of Sir Richard’s £2 million house when her son appeared holding a six-inch kitchen knife.
She was struck by the look in his eyes, which she described as ‘terribly determined’.
Her evidence, which was recorded in June and played to the court yesterday, showed she had been left in a wheelchair following the bloody attack at Sir Richard’s Moorhill country estate in Higher Langham, near Gillingham, Dorset.
Schreiber bowed his head and appeared not to look at the screen showing his mother’s evidence.
Mrs Schreiber, originally from Denmark, told the court her memory of the day before the attack was unclear but she was able to recollect the incident.
She said: ‘Thomas looked unusual. His eyes were quite weird – I would say almost frightening to look at because they looked terribly, terribly determined.
‘I received some stabs from him and I remember looking at the knife in me and being surprised that it didn’t hurt more. He was definitely not himself – I would swear on oath with my heart that the man who came into my kitchen could have been a total stranger.
‘That man who appeared to me at that moment, I could hardly recognise him he was so withdrawn. The grimaces in his face, they were... he looked very torn. His eyes, they were really very wild-looking.’
Mrs Schreiber, a physiotherapist, told the court her son had been an ‘attractive child’ but possessed a ‘furious temperament’.
She said: ‘I must admit that he can be very aggressive, especially to me, I seem to take the brunt. I couldn’t get away with very much before he would jump at me.’
As her evidence ended, Mrs Schreiber said people would perceive her as ‘this stupid woman [who] let something go so out of hand, but I didn’t necessarily see this coming’.
The jury also heard from therapist Francis Lickerish, who worked with Schreiber on a four-day trauma therapy course in 2019.
Mr Lickerish said he believed Schreiber was an alcoholic and had told him as much.
But he believed Schreiber did not accept the diagnosis at the time. The court was also played police bodycam footage after officers executed a ‘hard stop’ on the Range Rover Schreiber was driving on Chiswick High Road in west London after the stabbings on April 7.
He had led them on a 135mph car chase over more than 100 miles.
The footage showed Schreiber lying naked on the floor as police and paramedics fought to treat his apparently self-inflicted knife wounds. Throughout the incident, Schreiber could be heard begging police to ‘please just kill me’ and ‘put a bullet in my head’.
Schreiber was transferred to hospital, before he was arrested over the murder of Sir Richard and the attempted murder of his mother. The court was previously told how Schreiber and his siblings rowed over their inheritance following a horse racing event.
Sir Richard had given Schreiber a £100,000 gift in order to put a deposit on a property and also gave him a monthly £1,000 allowance.
Schreiber admits manslaughter, but denies murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility or loss of control. He also denies the attempted murder of his mother. The trial continues.
‘His eyes were quite weird’