BOYCE:ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT STABBED GIRLFRIEND TO DRIVE OUT HER DEMONS

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An illegal immigrant who stabbed his girlfriend to ‘drive out her demons’ could spend the rest of his life in a mental hospital at the British taxpayer’s expense, a court heard.

Mark Boyce, 38, plunged a knife into Stephanie Reid’s neck, back and arm in a ritual stabbing that mimicked the sign of the cross.

Ms Reid’s three-year-old daughter was left soaked in her mother’s blood and two of her sister’s children who witnessed the horrific attack in Mitcham, south London.

She was spared horrific injury because the eight-inch kitchen knife caught in her leather jacket, the Old Bailey heard.

Boyce, an overstayer from Trinidad, attacked Ms Reid after she split up with him, and there was evidence he later confessed to a friend that he knew what he did was wrong.

But psychiatrists who examined him after his arrest concluded that he was suffering from a ‘schizo-affective disorder of the manic type’ at the time of the stabbing and should be detained under the Mental Health Act.

Boyce was due to stand trial on a charge of attempted murder but the Crown accepted a guilty plea to an alternative count of wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm.

Judge Stephen Kramer QC ordered Boyce to be locked up indefinitely under the Mental Health Act and it will be up to psychiatrists to decide when, if ever, he is released.

The judge said he would have recommended that Boyce be deported back to Trinidad if he had not been found to be mentally ill.

But Judge Kramer said he was not in a position to make a recommendation and it will now be up to the Home Office to decide whether to send Boyce home.

In the meantime, he will be detained at the medium-security Bracton centre in Dartford, Kent.

Ian Wade, prosecuting, told the court: ‘Mr Boyce dealt the blows but asserted he was trying to free Stephanie Reid from her demons.

‘He has recently assertly that there was some method in striking her three times, it being a reference to the Trinity.’

The court heard how Boyce and Ms Reid started a relationship in April 2002 but by January of last year ‘she wasn’t happy for the relationship to continue’.

‘He didn’t accept that. It became clear that he was going to press his attentions on her perhaps too urgently.’

On January 23 last year she drove her daughter Indiana to her sister’s house in Mitcham, only to discover Boyce had secretly followed her.

‘She had put Indiana into the car seat and was making to get behind the wheel when Mr Boyce became more and more aggressive.

‘He then rummaged in a bag that he had been carrying. He pulled out the knife – a black-handled kitchen knife – and dragged Stephanie Reid from behind the wheel.

‘He raised it above his head. He had made it sufficiently clear he was liable to attack her that she had the presence of mind to release Indiana from the car seat and put her on her feet, and tried to get her to run into the house.’

But the child stayed rooted to the spot and looked on in horror with her aunt and two cousins aged 11 and 13 as her mother was stabbed. 

‘Mr Boyce brought the knife down three times, into her neck, into her back, into her right arm.

‘Mrs Reid was wearing a leather coat. It may be that the leather coat in some way helped her to avoid being more seriously injured than she was.’

She managed to run inside the house and Boyce was later arrested in an alley in Tooting High Street.

Forensic psychiatrist Michael Craig told the court he had seen Boyce twice and had concluded he was suffering from a schizo-affective disorder of the manic kind.

Mr Craig said: ‘It is usually a chronic disorder that relapse and and remits. It is likely that at some time in the future Mr Boyce will have some form of relapse of this disorder.’

The judge told Boyce: ‘It cannot be argued that you are not someone who is potentially dangerous.

‘Were it not for the mental illness I would have had no hesitation in recommending that you be deported.

‘I shall not make that recommendation today but leave it to the Home Office and the authorities at Bracton to discuss.’

Boyce, of (15) Heathfield Drive, Croydon, was originally charged with attempted murder but pleaded guilty to an alternative count of unlawful wounding.

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