Samurai sword attacker sentenced

Daniel Leather pleaded guilty to culpable homicide

A teenager who admitted killing his father with two Samurai swords has been given five years detention.

Daniel Leather, from Sanquhar, Dumfriesshire, was originally charged with murdering John Leather.

But he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of culpable homicide and was sentenced at the High Court in Edinburgh on Friday.

The 18-year-old told his mother, Margaret Leather, that Satan had ordered him to kill his father.

Mr Leather, a 49-year-old schoolteacher, was stabbed in his lungs, liver, pancreas and stomach.

He had initially disarmed his son when he attacked him with one of the swords but he went back into his bedroom and returned with a larger weapon and attacked him again.

Mental illness

Sentencing Leather to detention, temporary judge, Colin MacAulay QC, said there was "no alternative" but to impose a custodial term.

He told the teenager: "The taking of human life in any circumstances is a tragic event, but it is particularly tragic when a son takes the life of his own father."

During the original hearing in April at the High Court in Glasgow it was claimed that Leather was suffering from a depressive mental illness at the time.

He also admitted attacking and abducting his mother and forcing her to go with him to withdraw £200 from a cash machine.

Leather had become a virtual recluse

The court was told that Leather had been the victim of bullying at school after his family moved to Scotland from England and his behaviour began to change.

Leather joined the army but was discharged after a month when he became homesick and threatened to kill himself.

The court heard how he had became a virtual recluse who felt that his parents hated him.

He also greeted his family with Nazi salutes and said his ambition was to become a dictator.

On the day of the killing, his father had been nagging him to help in the house and telling him to get a job and a flat of his own.

The court heard on Friday that doctors had considered the possibility that Leather was suffering from a form of autism or developing schizophrenia.

'Something catastrophic'

However, they concluded there was no psychological condition which would completely excuse what he did.

Donald Findlay Qc, defending, said: "The only person with whom Daniel Leather had a problem was his father.

"It is very clear, and one does not know why, something catastrophic happened in the relationship between Daniel and his father.

"Where the blame for that lies, or what the cause of that is, remains unknown and is probably going to remain unknown."