Widow tells of pain and isolation

Satanist guilty of vicar killing No logic behind vicar killing

A vicar's wife who saw her husband being stabbed to death has told Cardiff Crown Court how she remembers the last moments of his life.

Father Paul Bennett, 59, was repeatedly stabbed by paranoid schizophrenic Geraint Evans on 14 March in the grounds of his Aberdare church.

Evans, 24, pleaded guilty to killing the vicar on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

He will be detained indefinitely at a high security psychiatric unit.

The court heard that Father Bennett was attacked within two minutes of stepping outside St Fagan's vicarage, Trecynon, to put the rubbish out.

Hearing screams, Mrs Bennett went outside to see her husband on his back with Evans on top of him.

As the 58-year-old tried to pull him off, Evans stabbed the vicar forcibly through the heart.

He did not die. He was taken from us, brutally and without point Georgina Bennett, wife

The court heard how Mrs Bennett had gone inside to dial 999 then came back outside carrying a kitchen knife.

But Evans told her to go back inside saying he did not want to hurt her, or her son.

In a statement to the court, Mrs Bennett said: "I replay over and over in my mind what I should have said or done.

"I hate that he was lying there in pain and I wasn't allowed to go to him.

"The last time I saw my husband was when he was lying near to death.

"It is not how I wish to remember him but I do not wish to forget him, even in this way because it is the last time I saw him.

Geraint Evans was obsessed with God and the devil

"I do not want to think of the agony of his injuries, the agony of my son Nigel to see it, to have to witness it, and the agony of my grandson and how much he misses his granddad."

Cardiff Crown Court was told the 59-year-old vicar, who was profoundly deaf, had run away from his front door towards the gate that led to the church yard, probably to protect his family.

Mrs Bennett told the court she could only begin to explain how special her husband had been.

"The church was his calling in life. He lived his life for the people of the parish and he cared for all of them," she said.

"I could go on about his generosity and devotion but I will explain one simple example to show it.

"We had come back from holiday and it was very late at night when we received a call from one of his parishioners whose elderly mother was very ill.

"Due to how late it was, he could very easily have said he would go in the morning. Such was his devotion that he went straight away."

Forensic officers searched the graveyard after the attack in March

She told the court how the family had re-arranged the lounge furniture because it reminded them so much of the day he died.

"It saddens me that he will never see his untidy study, never use the books or go back to his lifetime of work," she said.

"When the police searched the study they put everything back so neatly that it never looked like his again.

"Initially we were so isolated. Our house became a prison that I was desperate to, but couldn't bear, to leave."

Mrs Bennett told the court her grandson could not face going to church because everything there was about his granddad.

"My husband contributed so much to the church," she said.

"He did not die. He was taken from us, brutally and without point.

"This is all so unnecessary and cruel."

Evans was initially charged with murder but his plea of manslaughter was accepted after three doctors presented reports to the court confirming that Evans was a deluded paranoid schizophrenic.

Ordering him to be detained indefinitely at Ashworth Hospital, Judge Nicholas Cooke QC said he was guilty of inhuman savagery.