Potential serial killer in jail for just two hours
A "potential serial killer" who lured a teenager to a remote beauty spot and stabbed him 128 times spent just two hours in prison before he was transferred to a medium secure psychiatric hospital.
Alex Davies, 18, was murdered in Parbold, Lancashire, by Brian Healless, 20, after they agreed a rendezvous through the dating app Grindr.
Healless, from Chorley, tried to set up similar outdoor meetings with four other males on Grindr in the days after the killing in April 2019.
Preston Crown Court heard that Healless was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the killing, but a jury rejected his partial defence that his responsibility for the killing was diminished by his mental state.
The judge who sentenced him in March last year, to life with a minimum term of 24 years, said it was "extremely fortuitous" Healless was arrested before anyone else suffered the same fate as the "gentle, kind-hearted" sales assistant from Skelmersdale.
Healless was treated at Guild Lodge Hospital in Preston before conviction and was returned there on the day of his sentencing, following a request from the doctor overseeing his care - who also gave evidence for the defence at the trial.
His victim's mother, Beverley Davies, 56, she was "shocked" to learn weeks later of the move.she said: "We feel justice has not been served on a sadistic murderer and a potential serial killer who should never be released into society.
"He has never shown any remorse.”