Voices drove man to kill children with a hammer

A MAN was driven by voices in his head to batter his two young children to death with a hammer, a court was told yesterday.

Aiden Kenny, 34, was ordered to be detained indefinitely in a special hospital after admitting the manslaughter of his 10-year-old daughter, Lesley, and eight-year-old son, Joseph.

Kenny, a paranoid schizophrenic, had used cannabis on the day of the killings in March this year and there was evidence that large quantities of the drug could cause 'hallucinations, delusions, paranoia and anxiety', Martin Steiger QC, for the prosecution, told Manchester Crown Court.

He said Kenny, who was looking after the children because they were off school, hit each of them about six times on the head, killing them instantly.

The day before the killings, Kenny had walked the family's dogs with Lesley and started talking to one of them, calling it Bertie, said Mr Steiger. After his arrest he told police: 'Bertie said it would be all right.'

The Recorder of Manchester, Judge Rhys Davies QC, heard that Kenny had been diagnosed as schizophrenic and that Joseph and another sister, Patricia, were on a social services 'at risk' list after being hit by him. But the judge said there had been no indications to anyone of what was to come. 'Very bizarre events took place but there was no indication of anything of this magnitude.'

He told Kenny, of Wythenshawe, Manchester, who came to Britain with his girlfriend Brigid, 34, from Ireland in 1983: 'Tragedy is a word that is sometimes overused in these courts but this indeed is a tragedy . . . You were driven by imagined voices to do what you did. Equally your responsibility for your actions was diminished by your mental illness.'

Kenny's pleas of not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter because of diminished responsibility were accepted by the prosecution. Mr Steiger said Kenny showed signs of unusual behaviour from 1983, when he claimed he was aware of what was happening while he was asleep.

He had once tried to emasculate himself with a pair of garden shears and had been a patient at a psychiatric hospital. He thought himself responsible for disasters such as the Gulf war.

After killing the children, Kenny injured himself and was taken to hospital. He said he had heard voices and had to murder the children.

Richard Henriques QC, for the defence, said Brigid had said: 'I never dreamed Aiden would hurt the children. His anger was always towards me.'

Brian Harrison, joint chairman of Manchester City Council's children's services committee, said yesterday that everyone involved in the case had acted 'correctly and appropriately' but some of their procedures would be tightened up after recommendations made in two reports.

(Photographs omitted)