Mind Soup

A son stabbed his 100-year-old mother in the neck then told his brother "I've just gone mad," a court has heard. Hannah Fitzgibbon lived in Stepney with her son BBC : Michael Fitzgibbon, 62, admitted the manslaughter of Hannah Fitzgibbon at the Old Bailey. She died from a stab wound to her neck at the terraced home they shared in Stepney, east London in February. Fitzgibbon denied murder and the prosecution accepted his manslaughter plea on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The unemployed former black cab driver was initially charged with murder. But prosecutors accepted a plea to the lesser charge after psychiatrists agreed he was suffering depression of "moderate severity" as well as the early stages of Parkinson's disease. Crispin Aylett QC, prosecuting, said: "This is a case in which the defendant stabbed his mother when she was 100 years old. Deteriorating health "This occurred at a time when it seems that in fact th...

AP : A Saudi judge has asked several hospitals in the country whether they could damage a man's spinal cord as punishment after he was convicted of attacking another man with a cleaver and paralyzing him, the brother of the victim said Thursday. Abdul-Aziz al-Mutairi, 22, was left paralyzed and subsequently lost a foot after a fight more than two years ago. He asked a judge in northwestern Tabuk province to impose an equivalent punishment on his attacker under Islamic law, his brother Khaled al-Mutairi told The Associated Press by telephone from there. He said one of the hospitals, located in Tabuk, responded that it is possible to damage the spinal cord, but it added that the operation would have to be done at another more specialized facility. Saudi newspapers reported that a second hospital in the capital Riyadh declined, saying it could not inflict such harm. Administrative offices of two of the hospitals and the court in Tabuk were closed for the Saudi weekend beginning ...

​Jennifer Daugherty may have been 30, but she was mentally disabled with the mind of a young teen. Still, she seemed to be doing well enough and was involved with a community center in Greensburg, Pennsylvania... ​So her stepdad, Bobby Murphy, put her on a bus to Greensburg on Monday. She'd mentioned meeting a number of friends there, so dad wasn't alarmed when she called later that day to say she was spending the night with someone named "Peggy." She would be back the next day. That didn't happen. She apparently went to an apartment with six people she knew, but for reasons unknown they decided to turn on Jennifer. Perhaps just because they could. They forced her to drink vegetable oil, detergent and urine. She ate spices and medications. They shaved her head and beat her with a towel rack, a vacuum cleaner hose and a crutch. Then they forced her to write a suicide note before stabbing her to death. She was wrapped up in Christmas decorations and clot...