‘Evil’ killer jailed for shooting parents

Conman Stephen Seddon, 46, was branded a “monster” by a judge after blasting his elderly and doting parents to death with a sawn-off shotgun to get his hands on their money.

But Seddon, who told “lie after lie after lie” to escape justice, shook his head and shouted “I’m an innocent man” as the judge jailed him for life with a minimum 40 years before parole.

Seddon, a convicted fraudster with an “insatiable thirst” for money, was named by his parents Robert Seddon, 68, and Patricia, 65, as sole beneficiary of their £230,000 estate in their will.

The father-of-three first tried to drown them by staging a road accident and driving a car into a canal with them strapped in the back, Manchester Crown Court heard. He then “played the hero” boasting of his supposed rescue attempts after aborting the murder plan when bystanders went to their aid in the submerged car.

After that plan failed, armed with a sawn-off shotgun, he went to their quiet suburban home in Sale, Greater Manchester, last July 4.

His mother, still recovering from the canal crash, tried to fight him off in the hallway but went to the ground where her son put the gun against her left temple and pulled the trigger.

His father, in the lounge, was shot from close range in the neck as he either lay or was about to get up from a sofa.

He then placed the gun on his father’s lap in a bid to make it look like a murder-suicide.

Passing sentence, Mr Justice Hamblen told the defendant: “One can only imagine the horror of your parents’ last moments in this life, when they realised what a monster their son, whom they loved, had become.

“Mercifully their deaths were swift. The reason for the attempted murders and the murders was greed. You needed money.”

Loved ones of the murder victims hissed “Yes!” and burst into tears after Seddon was convicted by a jury yesterday following a five-week trial.

In a statement read outside court, the family said: “The shock of having both Pat and Bob taken from us in such horrifying and tragic circumstances has left us feeling numb.”