R v Christopher Monro

In the course of this judgment I am going to refer in some detail to what happened, which will be inherently distressing. If anybody wishes to leave court when I come to that section of the judgment, they are of course welcome to do so.

His Majesty's Solicitor General applies for leave to refer a sentence which she regards as unduly lenient. The sentence was imposed by His Honour Judge Lambert sitting in the Crown Court at Bristol on 23 December 2025. The offender, who is now 31 years old, had previously pleaded guilty to a single count of murder. The judge imposed the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment and determined that the minimum term should be one of 12 years less 314 days spent on remand. The total sentence was one of life imprisonment with a minimum term of 11 years and 51 days. We give leave.

The victim was the offender's father. The victim lived alone, having separated some time ago from his wife. They had two children together: the offender and his sister Lara. The victim was supported in living at home by carers who came to visit him twice a week. He had few other visitors.

The offender was a profoundly troubled young man whose life was blighted by alcoholism and mental health issues for which he had been prescribed antipsychotic medication; but he was being treated in the community. He lived by himself in a flat. His mother lived nearby and took on the main role of looking after him and his welfare.

The offender would on occasions visit his father. They had a difficult relationship. In the months leading up to early February 2025 the offender showed erratic and disturbing behaviour. After a visit in November 2024 his father informed a friend of his that the offender was a "nightmare" because he could not do anything for himself. During the day he had sat and stared at his father in a way that made him feel very uncomfortable. He had asked to sleep in his father's bed because he wanted to sleep next to his father.

At the end of October, the offender had been on a walk with his support worker when a knife fell from his bag, causing the support worker sufficient concern that he notified the police. A week later the offender told his psychiatrist that he was having thoughts of self-harm and that was why he had the knife.

In January 2025, the offender was prescribed Clonidine to try to treat a possible Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder. By the end of January 2025 and into early February 2025, the offender was struggling to look after himself properly. He had been drinking heavily, and his flat had fallen into a degree of neglect. It led him to visit his father in Bath and stay with him for a few days.

A friend of the victim remembered seeing the victim for the last time on Thursday 6 February 2025. They went shopping together at about 12 noon. The offender appears to have arrived at the victim's address about 1 pm that day. During his stay the offender stayed on the sofa in the living room.

Between 7 February 2025 and 9 February 2025, the offender was seen on more than one occasion on CCTV purchasing quantities of alcohol at a nearby shop. The victim was also seen getting into and out of his vehicle with the offender.

At 9.19 am on 9 February 2025, the victim and his former wife exchanged a series of text messages in which the victim wrote that the offender was leaving "tomorrow", and he had "nothing to add more than his behaviour here".

Later that evening, when he returned home, a neighbour heard shouting coming from the victim's house. They could not tell what was being said. They heard at least one voice shouting; the voice had a deeper tone like a man. Then there was another noise. It was a deep sound like something was "dropped". Another neighbour heard "someone shouting and then maybe a singular noise", possibly a bang or a loud male voice making a singular sound. Her boyfriend told her the noise came from the home of the victim. A neighbour on the other side of the victim's address heard three loud successive bangs coming from the upstairs room of the victim's home: "It went silent for 10 minutes, followed by another three loud bangs … I did not hear any voices or any other sound … The noise was very unusual."

At some point, the precise timing of which cannot be fixed precisely, the offender repeatedly and savagely stabbed his father in the neck and killed him. When asked subsequently why he had done it, the nearest thing to a coherent answer was that his father would not let him use the shower or stay the night.

At 6.20 am on Monday 10 February 2025, the victim called his mother for 2 minutes. By now the offender had killed his father - either that morning or the night before. At 6.48 am the offender took a photograph of his father's body. At 7.13 am the offender took a second photograph. At 9.31 am the offender bought four cans of Guinness and at least eight cans of cider. He returned to the victim's home at 9.46 am.

Later that morning, a taxi pulled up outside the house. The offender put a grey holdall in the boot and then got into the taxi. The taxi driver noticed the offender's clothing lifted slightly to reveal a red mark on his lower back. The offender got into the front passenger seat of the taxi and the driver confirmed he was going to the train station. The driver noticed the offender started to lick the back of his hands alternately, left then right, like a cat would lick their paws. He was also rubbing his hands on his trousers.

Having exchanged pleasantries, the offender told the driver he had "just killed my dad" in a normal tone of voice. The driver asked him if he was joking. The offender said that he was. The offender ended up travelling via train to Didcot Parkway.

At 5.06 pm, the offender started to use the victim's telephone, pretending to be him. When someone messaged whom they believed to be the victim asking if the offender was still with him, the offender replied that "he already left". At 8 pm, the victim's daughter - Lara (the offender's sister) sent her father two photographs from her holiday. The following day at 4.39 pm the offender replied to his sister pretending to be their father, saying, "Fab stuff send me more".

On Tuesday 11 February 2025, the offender's support worker called the offender who told him he wanted his medication again: "He sounded normal and didn't mention anything about his mum or dad. I tried to arrange the cleaning [of his flat] again for the next day. He agreed and said, 'I know ... it's not pleasant'."

At 12.25 am the offender sent a message to someone he called the "Gangster from Manchester", writing that, "It's done". It is not clear whether the offender was there providing an opaque confession as to what he had done to his father but there was no other obvious explanation or context for sending that message.

A friend of the victim came to visit him shortly after 12 noon. He called out the victim’s name and there was no answer. The friend noticed that ornaments, cards and mementos usually displayed on the stairs to the first floor were in disarray. They were "scattered all over the stairs … so as I went upstairs, I noticed an empty … case of alcohol [on the floor]. From my knowing and knowing [the victim], he never drinks alcohol so it's something that shook me before I even saw him in the room." The door to the victim's bedroom was open a few centimetres. When the friend went in, he saw that the room was scattered with empty bottles of beer and wine. The victim was lying on the bed. The friend poked his leg to wake him up but then noticed that the victim's neck had been cut. Items that were usually on his bed with him (two mobile telephones and a cushion to mount books on when he was reading) were missing.

The friend dialled 999. On leaving the bedroom and going back downstairs the friend noticed a wet cigarette and the sheath for a knife on the floor. The police arrived shortly thereafter.

The victim was fully clothed. He had no bedsheets over his body. There was a significant amount of blood to the left side of his head on the bed. Next to the victim's head was a heavily blood-stained knife. It was about 8" long with a blade of about 4" in length. It was a Kukri knife from Nepal and it belonged to the victim.

PC Osborne described what appeared to be a "significant laceration to the right side of the neck, just beneath his chin. This laceration appears to be deep and angled towards his head." PS Gamage described "a massive wound to the front of [the victim's] neck … cut all the way down to a point where I could see the inside of a large passageway which I believe would be his oesophagus."

PC Osborne saw seven open cans of alcohol on a small table less than a metre from the victim's bed. On the stairs outside the bedroom, he saw a blue and silver knife sheath of the same shape as the knife. PS Gamage described the scene as "very cluttered, with multiple cans of alcohol".

Paramedics arrived at 12.24 pm. They described the wound as long and extremely deep. We do not need to give any further description.

Meanwhile, someone had sent a WhatsApp message note to the victim at 12.50 pm asking if he was ok. At 1.41pm, a reply was received (written by the offender) which read, "Hey Jonathan all is dandy, Kit went back to Oxford".

The offender was arrested at 5.17 am on 12 February 2025. The offender came into custody with some personal property, including a small bag in which there were, amongst other items, three of the victim's bank cards. His mobile telephone (found in his flat) was examined. The offender had used his phone and taken photographs of his father lying on his bed, covered in blood.

PC Matthew Whitehead had been tasked to observe the offender in his cell from shortly after 7.30 am. At 9.17 am the offender started to perform frog jumps in the cell. He then dived onto the floor without the support of his hands and hit his head. He said that he did that because "my dad always hit me on my head, so that's what I'm doing". The offender was then examined by a nurse. He made some further significant comments saying that he was "sorry about all this, I just had an outer body experience at my house. It's my Dad." At 12 noon he said, "I can't forgive myself for what I have done. I just want it to end. It was the out-of-body experience."

During the taking of samples and photographs in police custody, the offender's levels of agitation required that he be returned to his cell. He made some significant comments, stating that he did not want to be there anymore. He repeatedly said, "Please just put me down" and that "I just want you to give me the lethal injection". He repeatedly expressed a wish to die.

At 7.15 pm the offender was the subject of a mental health assessment in police custody. One of those assessing him was a forensic psychiatrist - Fiona Bacon. She was in company with two colleagues. All had previously met the offender during their work. Dr Merson was his community psychiatrist. The purpose of the assessment was to determine if the offender was suffering from a mental disorder of a nature or degree that required compulsory admission to hospital for further assessment or treatment. When they went to his cell, the offender was lying on his bed. He said that he had killed his father. He told the psychiatrists that he should not have done it and that it was "not good". He was concerned about being in prison and being kept in custody indefinitely.

He was broadly asked what had happened. He said that he had been staying with his father and that he felt stuck there. He had been drinking too much alcohol. He said that the relationship with his father was a bad one and that he had bad thoughts towards him because he was angry at being treated like a child. He said his father would not give him money and that he had not been allowed to have a bath. He said that the reason he wanted to spent time with his father was to talk to him "and maybe lie down with him and keep him company". The offender said that there had "kind of" been a row between them. His father had been pushing him around. He said that later he used a kitchen knife to stab him. It all happened in a rush.

All three psychiatrists agreed that the offender did not meet the criteria for being detained to assess or treat his mental health at that time. He displayed no symptoms of any serious mental health disorder requiring immediate diversion to a psychiatric hospital. He was deemed fit to be interviewed.

A post-mortem examination was carried out, which we do not need to record in any detail, save to say that it recorded a huge, incised wound to the front of the neck. Other details are not necessary. The injuries were not self-inflicted. The cuts to the victim's hands were consistent with defensive injuries. The cause of death was knife wounds to the neck. The pathologist's final conclusions were that the principal injury was the wound to the front of the victim's neck. He had died as a result of the knife wound to the neck, which resulted in major vessel damage. Death would have resulted from a combination of blood loss and respiratory compromise resulting from the aspiration of blood. The wounds could have been caused by relatively mild to moderate force if the knife was sharp.

In police interview the offender was initially asked about significant comments he had made at the police station in Abingdon. He admitted saying that he could not forgive himself for what he had done, that he wanted it all to end, and that it was an out-of-body experience. He accepted that he had said that his father used to hit him on the head, even when he was younger, because that is what happened. On receiving further legal advice he made "no comment" to all remaining questions asked of him around the circumstances that led to his father's death.

The offender had no previous convictions. There was extensive psychiatric evidence detailing the history of the offender's increasingly troubling mental decline. The report of Dr Srinivas, written in July 2025, recorded that it had been noted in the Gatekeeping assessment that between December 2024 and February 2025 the offender "deteriorated significantly, assaulting his mother, refusing medications and engagement with treatment plans, became 'unstable and aggressive'". He was referred for an ASF assessment and was diagnosed with PTSD. His key worker noted "a lot of concerns around mental instability, harmful use of alcohol and poor self-care". Dr Srinivas described multi-factorial difficulties, without being able to reach a firm diagnosis. However, in his opinion at that stage the offender was not fit to plead.

The offender appeared before the magistrates' court on 14 February 2025. His case was sent to the Crown Court. He appeared before the Crown Court on 17 February 2025. At that stage it was yet to be determined whether he was fit to plead and/or whether any partial defences were available to him. Expert psychiatric evidence was obtained. On 11 August 2025 the offender pleaded guilty to murder and sentence was adjourned.

During the period between pleading guilty and being sentenced, the offender did not engage the psychiatric team who would have assessed him, thereby limiting the information available to the judge about the offender's mental state at the time of the murder - a limitation which we now share.

There were four victim personal statements from members of the victim's family, including his wife, his daughter and his sister - the offender's mother, sister and aunt. They exhibit an astounding mixture of grief and compassion, both for the victim and also for the offender. Each describes in harrowing detail the offender's transformation from being a laughing inquisitive young boy to being a deeply troubled man over years, struggling to come to terms with his own difficulties, and the unresolved family difficulties that he committed while in, what one witness describes as, "his hell". We have read them with close attention, as did the judge. They were eloquent, dignified and exceptionally powerful.

It was and is common ground that the starting point in determining the minimum term was 15 years.

The prosecution submitted that the following aggravating features were present:

Mitigating features were identified by the prosecution as follows:

Defence counsel pointed to the high level of Autistic Spectrum Disorder. The mitigating features identified by the prosecution were agreed. The defence did not agree that the offence was to be regarded as "an act of domestic abuse" within the meaning of the guidelines.

The judge's sentencing remarks were concise and humane, recognising that what had happened was a terrible family tragedy, first and foremost for the offender's father who had lost his life, for his family and friends, but also for the offender. Their full meaning and impact require that we set them out in some detail:

The judge then turned to the determination of the minimum term, adopting the agreed starting point of 15 years. He identified the aggravating features as being:

While accepting that the family relationship was an aggravating factor, the judge did not accept that the overarching guideline in respect of domestic abuse applied: "The violation of the trust and security there should have been between son and father however remains a consideration."

Turning to mitigation requiring a downward adjustment, he identified:

Having identified these aggravating and mitigating features, he fixed the minimum term as we have indicated.

It will be noted that the judge clearly had in mind the importance of the offender's mental health issues in assessing culpability, but he was also acutely conscious of the limitations in the psychiatric evidence available to him. Given the significance of the offender's plea of guilty to murder with its implicit acceptance that the partial defence of diminished responsibility was not available to the offender, that remains the position before us.

The Solicitor General's submission is short and concise and has been put fairly, as always, by Mr Lloyd. The minimum term of 12 years after a reduction of one-sixth for plea means that the judge's notional minimum term before that reduction was in the region of approximately 14½ years. Since it is agreed on all sides that the appropriate starting point was 15 years, for the judge to have reached a notional minimum term of 14½ years means that he must have treated the mitigating features of the case as effectively cancelling out the aggravating features. That, submits the Solicitor General, is not merely lenient, but unduly lenient, and cannot be justified.

Mr Rutherford KC, who represents the offender before us as he did before the judge, submits that although not sufficient to enable the offender to be treated as having diminished responsibility, there is ample evidence that the offender's mind was highly disturbed and that the judge was not merely entitled but right to acknowledge that, as he did in his sentencing remarks and as we have set out above. He relies heavily on the clear-sighted contents of the victim personal statements. He also relies upon a recent prison report, which concludes that the offender "remains under mental health monitoring due to substantial concerns regarding self-neglect, behavioural disturbance and poor engagement". Of equal importance, he submits that the judge was careful not to give more than appropriate weight to the offender's mental health condition, stating "Although it is a consideration, it cannot lead to a large reduction in your minimum term".

In our judgment there are two points of potentially significant divergence between the submissions advanced by the Solicitor General and those advanced on behalf of the offender.

The first is whether this case should be treated, as submitted by the Solicitor General, as a case of domestic abuse or, as submitted by the offender, as a case where the domestic abuse guideline is not directly applicable, but the violation of trust and security there should have been between father and son however remains a consideration. In our judgment the approach adopted by the judge was right, for the reasons he gave. The fact that the offender murdered his father in his own home is a significant aggravating feature.

The second feature is more subtle and goes to the level of reduction that should be made for the offender's mental health and highly disturbed state. The judge recognised the implications of the offender's plea of guilty to murder. He was however hampered by the offender's failure to engage with the medical professionals, who would in the normal course of events have assessed him, and the level to which his responsibility was reduced both during the period before he was sentenced and, as now appears from the prison report, since sentence was passed.

If we were concerned with a strictly mathematical exercise, it would be easy to argue that the aggravating features of this case could have led to an upward adjustment from the starting point of 15 years to a notional minimum term in the region of 20 years. We would accept without hesitation that the offender's previous good character and lack of premeditation would not of themselves justify a reduction down from that level back to about 15 years. However, that was not all, and we are not dealing with a strictly mathematical exercise.

We have returned again to the judge's careful, humane and nuanced sentencing remarks and his treatment of the offender's mental health background and highly disturbed state when he murdered his father. We accept that some judges could and would have imposed a longer minimum term without fear of criticism. To that extent we accept that this was a lenient sentence, though we would prefer to describe it as thoughtful, thought provoking and humane. Arguably it is unduly lenient; though if it is unduly lenient it is not by much. In our judgment it would have been open to the judge to decide that the aggravating features required an uplift to about 20 years and that the totality of the mitigation could lead to a downwards reduction to about 16 years. If one then were to reduce the 16 years to reflect the plea of guilty, the lowest minimum term that could be supported by this kind of analysis would be one of 13 years and 4 months.

Accepting for the purposes of argument that it is unduly lenient, there remains the separate question whether this court should intervene. That, as so often, depends upon the extent to which the sentence imposed by the court below was unduly lenient, ie below the lowest sentence that could properly have been passed, this being a Reference and not simply a resentencing exercise. After anxious consideration and giving appropriate weight to the careful approach adopted by the judge, we have concluded that if we were to intervene, any intervention should be modest, in the order of between 1 and 1½ years. Standing back and considering this tragedy from every angle, we do not consider it to be appropriate to intervene to make such an adjustment.

In the final result therefore, we agree that this sentence was unduly lenient, but we will not intervene to adjust it. In these circumstances, though we have given leave, we dismiss the Solicitor General's application.