Man who stabbed his 60-year-old housemate to death sentenced to life in prison

A man who stabbed his housemate to death has been jailed.

Steven Thwaites, 62, attacked 60-year-old Vincent Douglas in Marmora Road, Lewisham, on December 2017, Blackfriars Crown Court heard.

Police attended the house at around 2:30am on December 1 and found Mr Douglas  in the garden suffering from stab wounds. Officers tried administered first aid before paramedics arrived . But Mr Douglas was pronounced dead at the scene.

A post-mortem examination held on 2 December at Greenwich Mortuary gave cause of death as a stab wound to the abdomen. Mr Douglas had also received stab injuries to the liver, face, and hands.

As officers spoke to residents at the scene, Thwaites claimed Mr Douglas had inflicted the wounds himself but gave differing accounts of where he had seen him, first claiming he had been on the ground floor but later stating Mr Douglas had been on the top floor.

Thwaites then claimed he had taken the knife Mr Douglas allegedly used to inflict his injuries and washed it before placing it in a drawer in his kitchen.

CCTV showed Mr Douglas going downstairs from his room with a head injury, he was then stabbed in his abdomen before he went outside the building pursued by Thwaites who was armed with a knife.

Thwaites required hospital treatment for laceration injuries to his hands that he claimed were as a result of taking the knife from Mr Douglas.

He was arrested on suspicion of murder upon discharge from hospital. During interviews he again gave differing accounts to police of what had happened.

He was then charged with murder, found guilty and sentenced to a minimum of 20 years on Wednesday September 26.

Detective Inspector Will Reynolds, of the Homicide and Major Crime Command, led the investigation. He said: “This was a very sad and unnecessary death. Both men were vulnerable adults, living in supported accommodation and without any history of conflict.

“Vincent Douglas posed no threat at all to Thwaites, as evidenced by the CCTV, played to the court. For reasons, still not understood today, Thwaites stabbed Vincent Douglas a number of times with a knife taken from the kitchen.

“On his arrest he gave a number of confused and conflicting accounts for how Vincent received his injuries and when interviewed tried unsuccessfully to suggest that Vincent stabbed himself whilst trying to take his own life. Vincent had no history whatsoever of self-harm and the jury rightly convicted Thwaites of murder.

“Vincent’s family are deeply upset by his death and are still coming to terms with how he could have been taken from them in this way, so unexpectedly. I hope this verdict goes some small way to helping them come to terms with their loss.”