Addict slaughtered 'Gentle Joe' for sake of a £10 bike

Prolific offender Gareth Brear stabbed 20-year-old Joe Cook 15 times with a kitchen knife after finding him alone in his student home in Leeds last August while looking for valuables to fund his heroin habit.

Brear, 31, had only been released on licence in March from his last three-year sentence for burglary.

Mr Cook, a fine arts student who was about to begin his second year at Leeds Metropolitan University sent a housemate a text message at 11.46pm on August 30 saying: "Theres sum 1 in the house" but it was not read until late the following day.

By then neighbours had contacted police after hearing an alarm inside the house in Ebberston Terrace, Hyde Park, probably triggered by Brear setting light to a mattress in a bid to cover his tracks.

Mr Cook's body, dressed only in boxer shorts and a dressing gown, was found in his bedroom. He had been repeatedly stabbed in his neck, chest, back and abdomen. One wound had punctured his lung and aorta.

Bloodstains showed Brear had coldly continued his search of the property before he finally left with another student's BMX bike, sold later for only 10.

And within three weeks of the killing Leeds Crown Court heard Brear had tried to break into another house in the city.

He later told police: "I was very drugged up and very drunk and when I get like this my head's like a ten-piece jigsaw with five pieces missing and I can only remember little bits of that night."

Brear, then of Royal Park Terrace, Leeds, yesterday admitted murdering Mr Cook and an attempted burglary on September 20 in Hill Top Place, Burley.

Jailing him for life and ordering him to serve a minimum of 26 years, Mr Justice Blair said his victim was "an intelligent young man with a bright future."

"That future came to an end when he confronted you in the course of your burglary. Joe Cook had been in bed and was completely defenceless."

The judge said staff at the homeless charity Simon on the Street Project who alerted the authorities over Brear had done the right thing.

Outside the court, the student's devastated parents Lesley and Nick Cook, from Newcastle, said: "Joe was not 'in the wrong place at the wrong time'. He was in the right place, in his bed, in his room, in his student house. He should have been safe.

"Joe never knew violence, he had never been in a fight. Joe could offer no provocation. He had no defence. Our gentle Joe had no hope against a murderer determined to stab him to death.

"Gareth Brear did not bungle a burglary. He chose to discard Joe's life and then to continue with his work.

"When Gareth Brear took Joe's life in the way he did, we believe he showed himself capable of doing the same again. The prospect of him having the opportunity to do so in our lifetime fills us with dread."

Graham Hyland QC, prosecuting, said Mr Cook was alone because his student friends were spending the Bank Holiday elsewhere. Tragically, his text message about someone being in the house was right. It is believed Brear got in through an open basement kitchen window.

Det Supt Bill Shackleton said it was a brutal killing where gratuitous wounds were inflicted after death. "Brear's criminal lifestyle and drug and alcohol abuse made for a deadly combination which cost an innocent young man his life," he said.

TWO WORLDS THAT COLLIDED IN VIOLENT TRAGEDY

Murderer Gareth Brear inhabited a different world to his victim, student Joe Cook, but their two worlds collided with tragic consequences last August, his defence counsel Andrew Stubbs QC told Leeds Crown Court.

Brear was a long-term heroin and alcohol addict.

His mother died when he was nine and he was taken into care when his stepfather subsequently went to jail.

After a series of foster placements he was housed in a succession of local authority children's homes.

Brear began drinking and taking drugs and at the age of 16 was in court for causing criminal damage.

He first appeared for burglary and theft at Hull Crown Court in February 1998 when he was given probation and community service.

At that same appearance he was sentenced for affray and possessing an offensive weapon after he had threatened a neighbour with a craft knife.

When his victim told him to go ahead and kill him Brear threw the knife away and urinated over his face.

He was frequently in court for burglary, theft and drugs offences between 1999 and 2004 before being jailed for three years at Leeds Crown Court on October 29, 2007, for which he was only released on licence in March last year.