Killers planned to eat the liver of Kendal rapist (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Killers planned to eat the liver of Kendal rapist

6:46pm Thursday 12th July 2012 in News

TWO inmates have been sentenced to life behind bars after admitting taking part in the murder of a fellow prisoner.

Sex offender Mitchell Harrison was pinned down and disembowelled after being cornered in a cell by killers Michael Parr and Nathan Mann.

The pair, both serving life sentences at the time of the attack, stabbed their victim through the eye with a pen, slit his throat using a homemade scalpel and then butchered him before leaving him dead on a blood-soaked bed in Durham’s top security Frankland Prison.

An investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death is being carried out by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman.

The judge, Justice Peter Openshaw, described the killing as being “of peculiar and unusual brutality”.

He said: “Because of the risk these prisoners pose I cannot envisage the circumstances where either of them are ever released.”

Parr, 33, pleaded guilty to murder, while Mann, 24, pleaded guilty to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility.

Both were sentenced to life at Newcastle Crown Court, Parr for a minimum of 32 years and Mann for a minimum of 16 years.

Judge Openshaw told them: “They will face the fact that they may well end their lives in prison.”

The court heard that Harrison, 23, serving four-and-ahalf years for the rape of a 13- year-old girl in Cumbria, was selected for the killing last October because he was considered “arrogant”.

Mann, described by a psychiatrist as “a remorseless, callous psychopath” and “one of the most dangerous men in the criminal justice system”, lured Harrison into his cell, where he was attacked with a weapon fashioned from plastic cutlery and a razor blade.

As Parr pinned him down, Mann tried to break his neck, then stabbed his victim and cut his throat.

Once he was dead, Mann cut open his stomach. Afterwards, Robert Smith QC told the court Mann had made no effort to hide the attack.

“He told the prison officer was a dead body in the cell,” he said.

Officers then found Harrison lying on the bed.

“When asked why they did this, both of them shrugged their shoulders,” Mr Smith said.

“Nathan Mann said he had chosen the deceased because he was arrogant and they didn’t like him.

“He said they had planned it for a while and just fancied doing it.

“There was nothing to suggest a fight or even a scuffle had taken place.”

Mann and Parr harboured a shared fantasy of cannibalism and planned to remove and eat their victim’s liver, but even they were so shocked by the injuries they had inflicted they were unable to go through with it.

Mr Smith said: “Nathan Mann told police that, after he had come to know his coaccused, he told Parr he had thoughts about killing people and that Parr had told him he thought the same way.

“They both agreed that they would do it and that they would eat his liver afterwards.”

At the time of the killing, Mann was serving life after he climbed through the window of a Leicestershire nursing home and killed two women, aged 72 and 56, who shared a room.

Parr was sentenced to life at Newcastle Crown Court in 2003 for attempted murder after he tried to smother a patient at a hospital in which he was being treated.

Yesterday, Ben Nolan, mitigating for Parr, said the defendant “knew what he had done and owned up to it in very plain terms”.

Michael Magarian, for Mann, said he “takes full responsibility” and although there was talk of eating Harrison’s liver, no cannibalism took place.