Sutton stabbing accused ‘harboured resentment’
Thomas Schreiber took his father’s side after parents’ separation
NEWBURY landowner and millionaire hotelier Sir Richard Sutton was stabbed to death, and his partner permanently injured, by her son, a murder trial heard.
Jurors at Winchester Crown Court have been told that Anne Schreiber moved in with Sir Richard at his home, Moorhill, in Higher Langham, near Gillingham, Dorset, in 2003, after separating from David Schreiber, the father of the defendant, who died on April 7, 2013.
Sir Richard’s extensive property portfolio included the 6,500-acre Benham Estate near Newbury.
The accused, Thomas Schreiber of Gillingham, Dorset, allegedly took his father’s side following the separation and “harboured a significant and sustained feeling of resentment towards both his mother and Sir Richard”.
Chillingly, jurors heard, he had texted a friend saying: “I contemplate murdering them all morning, day and night... I want them to suffer.”
Adam Feest QC, prosecuting, said armed police were
called to Sir Richard’s home at 9pm on April 7 where they found a trail of blood at the scene of a “ferocious and sustained attack”.
He added: “It was an attack that left Anne Schreiber barely conscious and dying on the floor of the kitchen.
“With slashes across her face and stab wounds to her front, 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.
“It was only through the quick actions of the police carrying her out of the house to the waiting paramedics and then the treatment she received from them and the doctors at the hospital – restarting her heart when she went into cardiac arrest and operating upon her to stem the blood loss – that she survived, albeit with severe and life-changing injuries.”
Mr Feest added: “Perhaps having heard Sir Richard moving about upstairs, the defendant has selected a second weapon, gone upstairs and killed his victim by stabbing him to the heart. This, the prosecution say, is a clear case of murder.”
He said that Sir Richard suffered five stab wounds, two of which were deep enough to puncture the lung and another to pierce the heart and that “death from these injuries would have been rapid”.
Mr Feest said that Mr Schreiber had been “harbouring increasingly strong feelings of resentment and hatred” towards his mother and Sir Richard.
He added: “Built upon a foundation of many years of feeling isolated and unfairly treated by all his family... 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.”
Mr Feest said the defendant sent a message to a friend in March 2021 saying: “I’m so sad to report that my mind is consumed with hatred of the very worst kind towards my family... I contemplate murdering them all morning, day and night... I want them to suffer.”
Mr Schreiber has previously admitted the manslaughter of Sir Richard and pleaded guilty to driving a Range Rover dangerously on the A303, A4 and M3. He denies murder and attempted murder.
The trial continues.