Autistic man's phone confession: I've knifed my mother to death'

In a dramatic recording of a 999 call played to a jury 21-year-old Sebastian Hardy confessed to killing his mother Pamela by stabbing her in the chest, neck and back at their Wombwell home.

He told the operator: “I knifed her to death.”

He also said: “I lost my temper.”

During a ten-minute call on a crackling line Hardy said his mother was lying on her side, not breathing with a kitchen knife sticking out of her body.

Hardy, of Foley Avenue, Wombwell, was deemed unfit to stand trial over his mother's death.

A jury at Sheffield Crown Court was charged with deciding whether he did the alleged act of stabbing his 48-year-old mother to death and they decided that he did.

Andrew Hatton, prosecuting, said Hardy, who has suffered from a severe form of autism since he was young, stabbed his mother nine times at their home.

Paramedics tried to revive the mother-of-four but she died on the way to hospital.

In a statement read in court, Hardy’s elder sister Caroline said she and Sebastian had gone shopping but did not bring back cigarettes which her mother had requested.

Caroline (28), accused her mother, who had twice unsuccessfully attended detoxification courses, of drinking and not looking after Sebastian properly and said  they had only brought back food.

Her mother started screaming and shouting and said: “It’s the only luxury I have got.

You treat me like a kid.”

Sebastian began slapping himself, pacing backwards and forwards and kept mumbling “Oh God.”

Mrs Hardy tried to hit her daughter but was so drunk she fell over and then began shouting and calling her son a “dickhead” which Caroline had never seen before.

Caroline Hardy said she asked her brother if he wanted to stay with her but he had calmed down by this time and declined.

She left but within a few hours her mother had been stabbed to death.

Mr Hatton said the emergency services were called about six hours later at 1am on Saturday, September 25 last year by Sebastian Hardy.

He was found bare-chested in just jeans and trainers in the front garden. Blood was smeared on his arms and jeans.

The court heard Sebastian had a brain virus when he was two and was diagnosed with autism at six.

He struggled to speak and communicate and was obsessed with only wearing certain colours and BHS jeans.

When someone touched him or he heard loud noises he would become aggressive.

His family were taught how to handle his mood swings but his mother, who split up from Sebastian’s father in 1999, developed a drink problem and it affected her care of Sebastian.

The defence offered no evidence and Hardy did not participate in the court process.

Judge Alan Goldsack made a hospital order without time limit.