Boy guilty of killing grandmother

Mrs McAlpine was killed at her Dumbarton home

A 15-year-old boy who stabbed his grandmother 23 times as she lay sleeping has been convicted of her murder.

Thomas McAlpine admitted killing Elizabeth McAlpine, 60, in Dumbarton in June last year.

But he blamed his actions on an overdose of sleeping tablets which he had taken in a suicide bid.

The jury at the High Court in Glasgow refused to believe McAlpine's story and found him guilty.

During a police interview McAlpine, now 16, lied repeatedly saying that he did not know what had happened to his grandmother.

He finally admitted the killing but blamed it on the overdose of 60 sleeping tablets.

McAlpine stabbed his grandmother with a kitchen knife after she had gone to bed.

Found dying

After the guilty verdict was announced McAlpine's family broken down in tears as he sat in the dock with his head bowed.

His sister Elizabeth, 17, had told the court that she was woken by the noise of the attack and found her dying grandmother on the floor.

She told the court: "I could hear my nan shouting something. She sounded as if she was saying: 'Thomas, Thomas.'

"I saw a shadow across the hall running from my nan's room to the toilet.

"I went into my nan's room. There was blood in the bed and the covers were halfway down the bed.

The jury heard the boy's taped interview about the stabbing

"There was lots of blood. My nan was crawling towards the radiator."

Earlier in evidence she told Alan Mackay, prosecuting, that she was called to a meeting at the school with the deputy headteacher along with her grandmother and brother on 14 June, last year.

She said: "Thomas had to sign a paper to say he would be of better behaviour.

"My nan said he had better buck up his ideas otherwise she was going to wash her hands of him."

McAlpine had been suspended from the school three times.

During a six-day trial McAlpine claimed that he "loved his grandmother to bits" and admired her for taking on the care of him and his older sister.

His defence counsel Donald Findlay QC said McAlpine was still grieving for the grandfather, who had died seven months earlier.

Major violence

He said he had become so depressed that he decided to kill himself.

Consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Thomas White claimed that McAlpine could have been suffering from a rare side effect known as paradoxical rage where instead of causing drowsiness, the tablets make people angry and full of rage.

Dr White said that prior to the incident McAlpine had not displayed any major violence, loved his grandmother and had never displayed any hostility towards her.

McAlpine denied murdering his grandmother by stabbing her on the head, neck and body with a knife while she was asleep in their home at Waverley Terrace, Dumbarton.

Judge Lord Clarke deferred sentence on McAlpine until 4 June at the High Court in Edinburgh.