Watching X Factor dancers drove man to behead wife

Paranoid delusions led husband to believe ‘puppets’ on reality show were going to attack

A MAN beheaded his “saintly” wife and their pet dog after suffering a paranoid delusion that dancers on The X Factor were speaking to him and would bring him “eternal damnation”.

Timothy Allen, 40, killed his wife Samantha Ho, 39, at their Cambridgeshire home as they watched an episode of the television singing competition on the August bank holiday weekend last year.

Allen, who had long-standing psychiatric problems stemming back to a motorbike accident a decade earlier, told police that he believed the dancers were “puppets” being controlled by a puppet master who was coming to get him, Southwark Crown Court heard.

Ms Ho made a “harrowing and up- setting” call to the police in concern after her husband tried to cut his own throat.

When officers arrived, they found Allen bare chested, covered in blood and repeatedly stabbing the couple’s border collie.

He was detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act 1983 yesterday after pleading guilty to manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility. Andrew Jackson, prosecuting, said that the episode involving the television show appeared to have been the “trigger” for the “extremely brutal” killing. “Asked why he had done it, he explained he had been watching people dancing on The X Factor on the television and saw them as puppets,” Mr Jackson said.

“That account was later repeated and expanded on when he said he saw the dancers on the TV as being controlled by a puppet master.

“He said he felt really scared and they were speaking to him through the TV and that they were going to get him and Samantha.” The day before Ms Ho’s death, Allen had been referred to a psychiatrist. The court heard that Allen, who appeared via video link from Wymondham police station, lived with Ms Ho, who worked for Asterand, a bioscience firm in St Neots, Cambridgeshire.

The couple, who met in 1995 at Nottingham Trent University where they both studied sciences, had lived a happy life together until Allen was involved in a serious motorbike accident in 2004.

After the accident, Allen began to struggle with paranoid schizophrenia, delusions and depression. But the couple went on to marry in 2010 and, other than a brief separation in 2014, they stayed together.

Peter Doyle QC, defending, said Ms Ho was “saintly”, a “caring, loving and supportive partner” who had “never faltered” in her care for her husband.

The judge, Mrs Justice McGowan, said Allen presented a risk to the public and should not be released from a secure hospital until the Secretary of State deems him not to be a risk.