'No logic behind vicar killing'

Geraint Evans posted hundreds of delusional ramblings on forums

The ramblings of a deluded man show that Father Paul Bennett was in the wrong place at the wrong time, according to a leading criminologist.

Professor Michael Levi, said Geraint Evans, who fatally stabbed the vicar in the grounds of his church, was undoubtedly disturbed.

Just how disturbed the 24-year-old loner was emerged after his arrest.

Evans had left hundreds of bizarre messages on the forums of a website dedicated to the occult.

His pseudonym - Jack Blade - offered a clue to his obsession with knives, backed up by his favourite films, Hallowe'en, The Matrix and Nightmare on Elm Street.

But it is what he wrote that gives a real insight into the mind of Evans.

Prof Michael Levi said it is hard to understand why Evans killed

In more than 300 long, rambling messages, which were written from October 2005 when Evans was around 22, it is clear he believed he was the embodiment of both God and Satan, Professor Levi explained.

In one message he wrote: "I am Satan, I am sin, an (sic) you all are sin by not listening to him. So sort it out, live life right or you'll meet the Darkest Knight."

In another rambling poem, he wrote: "I long for your death's, I long for your last breath's, I just want you to see, who I truly be. I am the Beast, an Im dieing to feast, feast on your soul."

It was also clear from the messages Evans was convinced he had cancer and thought he would die by the time he was 28.

But re you truly safe from me... I mean where the hell this mythical saviour be... Are far s I can see... He is truly me Geraint Evans, writing as Jack Blade on satanic forums

He also spoke out about religion - especially the Roman Catholic church.

Professor Levi, who lectures at Cardiff University, has since studied Evans' messages and believes he was a man who, for no logic or reason, snapped and killed - with Father Bennett being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"He clearly did seem to be obsessed and perhaps he just thought 'the church is taking over my own role as God and therefore... I as both God and Satan should make them pay'," he said.

"Why this wonderful vicar who, by all accounts, was a marvellous figure in the community? He was just there in the wrong place at the wrong time as far as he was concerned."

Professor Levi also said although his writings were disturbed, it would have been hard to predict at the time that Evans would go on to kill.

"There's this sort of rambling, disillusioned nonsense [in the messages]. Reading it with the benefit of hindsight, knowing that person has killed someone you obviously do interpret it differently," he said.

Father Paul Bennett was stabbed in front of his wife

"Lots of people might write drivel like this and never harm anyone. He was writing this stuff at a time when he wasn't killing people.

"We don't really know what makes someone build up like this and suddenly snap."

Professor Levi emphasised it would have been hard for people in Trecynon to have identified the warped mind of the killer living among them.

"The sad truth of the matter is that if people seem to be a bit weird, a bit withdrawn, we tend to just avoid them in our daily lives," he said.

"So it's very hard to pick up the signs that people are getting worse or, for that matter, getting better. We just shut them out of our lives.

"Whether he would have behaved differently, whether he could've been integrated better into the community or put onto different drugs that might have alleviated the symptoms we will never know."