‘I hope she’s dead’: Barnsley boy, 15, kills mum with baseball bat

James Gethen, now 16, was given an indeterminate detention order today by a judge at Leeds Crown Court who heard he had significant psychiatric problems at the time he killed his mother Ann, 39.

Gethen was told he must serve at least five years before he is considered for release.

Mr Justice Openshaw heard that Gethen attacked his mother at their home in Goldthorpe, near Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

He was told the teenager hit her a number of times with the bat as she sat on a settee in the early hours of August 15 last year.

After the “dreadful” attack, Gethen told his 16-year-old sister Paula: “I don’t care what I’ve done. I’m not bothered. I hope she’s dead.”

He later told a neighbour: “I hit my mum round the head with a baseball bat. I could see her brains and everything.”

Gethen pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at a previous hearing.

The judge heard the defendant had a history of “episodes of unprovoked, compulsive violence” and a string of psychiatric problems including the childhood equivalent of an emerging personality disorder.

He was told of one incident in which Gethen tried to strangle a fellow pupil in a PE class with a shoelace, after which he said: “I decided I wanted to kill him.”

The court was also told Gethen had an extreme reaction to the death of his father Eric at the age of 71 on Boxing Day 2009.

His father was 34 years older than his mother.

Gethen “tried to enter the grave” and “wished at the time to be buried with his father”, the judge was told.

The court was also told of Gethen’s complex family life and how he lived in a fire-damaged, boarded-up house in which he was forced to share a bed with his teenage sister.

Despite these problems, the court heard he was not suitable to be dealt with by an order to be detained in a mental hospital.

Instead, the judge said Gethen would be detained at a local authority secure unit.

The judge said: “There’s a very high risk that he may cause serious harm to someone else. Neither I nor the doctors can say when, if ever, that danger may pass.”

After the case, Detective Superintendent James Abdy said it was a “tragic” incident.

Mr Abdy said the family “not only had to endure the loss of a loved one but also come to terms with the fact that Ann’s life was cut short at the hands of her own son, James”.