'Frenzied' killer held for life

Allen was convicted of the murder during a trial last month

A teenager who inflicted 142 separate injuries on his victim during a frenzied knife killing has been locked up for life.

Peter Allen, 19, left a knife lodged in Raymond Black's eye socket after the fatal assault in January.

During the attack at Mr Black's home in Carluke, Lanarkshire, his two-year-old daughter was asleep in another room.

At the High Court in Edinburgh, judge Lord Brodie ordered Allen be detained for life, with a minimum of 15 years.

Lord Brodie said the killer had inflicted an "extraordinary level of violence" on Mr Black.

The trial heard how Allen launched the attack just weeks after his release from a six month sentence for assault. He had downed a cocktail of drink and drugs.

Allen is the product of a hellish up-bringing Tony Lenehan Defence advocate

Detectives who found father-of-five Mr Black in his blood-soaked flat in Unitas Crescent, Carluke, described the crime scene as one of the worst they had encountered.

Allen, also of Carluke, had denied murder, and first claimed Mr Black had attacked him, before later changing his story and alleging that he had been provoked by the older man's sexual advances.

A jury rejected suggestions from Allen's defence team that he had committed a lesser offence of culpable homicide and found him guilty of murder.

During the six day trial they heard how Mr Black allowed Allen into his home on 12 January and the two had been drinking together.

Allen had also taken up to 30 Librium tablets and smoked heroin.

Some time during the night, Allen launched his ferocious attack, kicking and punching Mr Black, battering him with an Irn Bru bottle and a lamp standard then repeatedly cutting and stabbing him with a large kitchen knife.

Medics found the dead man's throat had been cut through to the spine and the knife was embedded just below Mr Black's left eye socket.

Det Sgt Graeme Lannigan, one of the first on the scene, told the trial: "The place was in a state of disarray. There was blood staining in pretty much everything I could see."

Foster homes

Allen, who was covered in blood, fled to his uncle's house, where he said: "I've just murdered Raymond Black."

He was later questioned by police over a separate incident, and told the officers: "I want to hold my hands up. It was me that murdered him."

Allen was subject to two bail orders and had been in court earlier on the day he murdered Mr Black.

His record of 17 previous convictions included two assaults and two offences of carrying knives, and he had served ten custodial sentences - the last finishing eight weeks before the murder.

Addressing the judge in advance of the sentencing, defence advocate Tony Lenehan said: "Allen is the product of a hellish up-bringing."

He told Lord Brodie that Allen had been deserted as a child by his single-parent mother, leaving him to be brought up in a succession of foster homes and residential schools.

The lawyer also asked the judge to accept that something must have happened in Mr Black's house, even though there was only Allen's word for it.

Lord Brodie said he accepted that the complete absence of parental support in Allen's life was "a crucial factor."

Mr Black's family left the court in tears after the hearing.