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Killer 'had rape fantasies'
20/06/2007 21:34 - (SA)
London - A teenager who admits stabbing a nurse to death in a frenzied attack last year told a court on Wednesday he had rape fantasies and had wanted to carry out a gun rampage at a school where he had been bullied.
Trainee accountant Stuart Harling, 19, stabbed Cheryl Moss 70 times in a savage attack as she enjoyed a cigarette break at a hospital in Essex.
Moss, 33, was attacked so suddenly she did not even have time to scream as she was set upon outside St George's Hospital in Hornchurch in April last year.
Harling admits killing Moss, who had worked at the hospital for more than 10 years, but denies murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
Under cross-examination at the Old Bailey, Harling, surrounded by six prison officers, said he was obsessed with violent video games and regularly surfed pornographic websites on killing, torture and death.
Fantasy becomes reality
One of his favourite websites was called "Psycopath.com".
"When I was at school I thought about shooting people like in the Columbine thing," Harling said, referring to the massacre at Columbine High School, Colorado, in April 1999 when two students shot dead 13 people and then killed themselves.
When it was put to him that he had not carried out such an attack, the bearded Harling replied: "Unfortunately no. I could not get hold of any guns at that stage."
Prosecutor Brian Altman said Harling was a loner who had developed a plan to kill someone at random to live out his fantasy.
"You killed Cheryl Moss because you had a fascination with killing someone," Altman said. "She just happened to cross your path that day. You derived some sadistic pleasure from it?"
'He is a sick man'
Harling denied the suggestion. When asked how he felt on hearing Moss had died, he said: "It did not really bother me."
His lawyer Michael Wolkind said his client, who had earned a junior black belt in kick boxing and also studied karate, suffered from Asperger syndrome and had a schizoid personality disorder.
"He is not walking evil. His mind has gone wrong. He is a sick man," Wolkind said.
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