Man ‘beat OAPs to death because he thought they were members of paedophile ring’
‘Disturbed and aggressive’
A MAN bludgeoned three pensioners to death while suffering delusions that made him believe they were paedophiles – just hours after being released from police custody, a court heard yesterday.
Alexander Lewis-Ranwell, 28, is accused of murdering Anthony Payne, 80, and twins Dick and Roger Carter, 84.
All three were beaten to death in their own homes on February 10 by Lewis-Ranwell, who was said to be experiencing delusional thoughts caused by paranoid schizophrenia, jurors were told.
He was arrested and released by police twice in the two days before the killings, including for a saw attack on farmer John Ellis, whom he falsely accused of being a paedophile, the court heard.
Lewis-Ranwell was freed from custody two and a half hours before killing his first victim.
Richard Smith QC, prosecuting, told Exeter Crown Court: ‘One delusion it appears he was suffering from on February 10 was that he was in some way involved in uncovering an organised paedophile ring who were holding and abusing children. His victims, he believed, were involved in that.
The victims [were] of course not involved in any such thing.’
Lewis-Ranwell was arrested for a third time the day after the killings after being accused of a subsequent attack on a hotel worker.
It was while he was being detained in hospital after this alleged offence that he was arrested on suspicion of murder.
Lewis-Ranwell does not dispute killing all three elderly men, or the circumstances in which they were killed, the court heard.
But he has pleaded guilty on a ‘special basis’ – by reason of insanity, claiming that due to his mental health at the time of the killings he did not know what he was doing was against the law. The judge, Mrs Justice May, told jurors: ‘Is it more likely or not that when he killed the men, Alexander Lewis-Ranwell did not know what he was doing was against the law?
‘If your verdict is “Yes”, you will find him not guilty by reason of insanity. If the answer is “No”, you will find him not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.’
Lewis-Ranwell, from Croyde, North Devon, first killed Mr Payne, who was ‘in failing health, weak and struggling to look after himself’. Mr Payne was ‘repeatedly’ struck on the head in his bedroom with a hammer, thought to have come from his small rundown house, before Lewis-Ranwell left.
Less than three hours later he arrived at the home of reclusive brothers Dick and Roger Carter.
He attempted to enter through the front of the home where they had lived their whole lives, but was chased off by one of the brothers and their boxer dog.
So he scaled a back wall and grabbed a spade before getting into the ‘very untidy’ house and using it to beat them to death.
Just hours before, Lewis-Ranwell had been released from Barnstaple police station, where he was being held for the alleged attack on Mr Ellis. He had been taken to the station at 10am on February 9. Officers there described his behaviour as ‘disturbed and aggressive’, saying he tried to take a Taser, urinated in cells and could only be interviewed through a cell door.
But he was released the next day, when he killed all three elderly men.
On February 11 he was tasered and arrested on suspicion of GBH for allegedly attacking hotel worker Stasys Belevicius in Exeter.
The court heard that due to concerns about his mental health he was taken to hospital in Exeter, where ‘quickly everything unravelled’ and he was arrested on suspicion of murder.
The trial continues.